Janet Altman (1945–2008)

We mourn the loss of our colleague Janet Altman, while we also celebrate her illustrious career as a teacher and scholar in the University of Iowa Department of French and Italian. Janet was the author of Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form (Ohio State University Press, 1982). This important book informed and inspired a generation of scholars dealing with fictional letters as literary practice. Both in this book and in the numerous articles that Janet published during her career, she was recognized as a world authority particularly on women writers including Mme de Sévigné and Françoise de Graffigny. Along with her influential studies of literary aspects of epistolary writing, Janet also pursued ground-breaking work on the cultural history of letter publication in early modern France. Janet's teaching and advising touched the lives of many undergraduate and graduate students. Dissertation students who launched careers under her direction include Gail Mensher, Dale Luciano, Jean-Pierre Lalande, Roxanne Lalande, Marie-Pierre Le Hir, Gilbert Converset, Kathleen Jaeger, and Vassiliki Tsitsopoulou. All who knew Janet Altman feel profound sorrow in her passing. We remember her as Marguerite de Navarre describes the character of Parlamente, "laquelle n'estoit jamays oisifve ne melencolicque."