Phi Beta Kappa Awards William Clyde DeVane Medals

Martin Price, the Sterling Professor Emeritus of English, and Fred C. Robinson, who is the Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English, were each awarded the William Clyde DeVane Medal by the Yale Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa on March 2.

The medals were presented at the annual Phi Beta Kappa banquet by Frank M. Turner, the John Jay Whitney Professor of History and Graduate President of the Alpha Chapter, and by Undergraduate Chapter President Alyssia Wise, a senior at Yale College.

The William Clyde DeVane Medal is the oldest and most distinguished award for exceptional instruction at Yale College. It has been conferred annually since 1966 by the Yale Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa for outstanding scholarship and undergraduate teaching. The medal is named for DeVane, who was dean of Yale College from 1938 until 1963, a long-time president of the Yale Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, and former president of the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa.

Each year, graduate members of the society vote the medal to a retired member of the faculty (Price) through the Graduate Officers and Board of Graduate Advisors of the Chapter; and the Phi Beta Kappa members of the senior class vote the medal to an active member of the faculty (Robinson).

Born in 1920, Price earned his M.A. degree from the University of Iowa in 1940. His studies were interrupted from 1944 through 1945 while he served in the United States Army. After the war, he joined the Yale faculty and earned his Ph.D. degree in 1950. He was appointed full professor in 1964, named the Thomas E. Donnelly Professor in 1971, and appointed a Sterling Professor in 1978. Price is a recognized authority on 18th century literature and the history of the novel. His works include “Swift’s Rhetorical Art,” “To The Palace of Wisdom” and “Forms of Life.”

Born in 1930, Fred C. Robinson earned both his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of North Carolina in 1954 and 1960, respectively. After teaching at Stanford and Cornell for 12 years, he transferred to Yale in 1972 to teach English philology and Medieval literature. Robinson is a leading scholar of Old English and of the history of the English language. He has published numerous books, including “The Tomb of Beowulf and Other Essays on Old English” and “The Editing of Old English.”

J.D. McClatchy, editor of the Yale Review, composed and recited a poem for the occasion. It is the fourth poem in what is projected to be a series of original poems commissioned by the chapter.