Merle Curti - Life

Life

Merle Eugene Curti was born in Papillion, suburb of Omaha, on September 15, 1897. His parents were John Eugene, immigrant from Switzerland, and Alice Hunt, a Yankee from Vermont. Curti went to high school in Omaha then went on to obtain a bachelor's degree in 1920 from Harvard University, graduating summa cum laude. He then spent a year studying in France where he met Margaret Wooster, 1898-1963, a PhD from the University of Chicago who was a pioneer in research on child psychology. They married in 1925 and had two daughters. Curti also received his Ph. D. in 1927 from Harvard as one of the last students of Frederick Jackson Turner.

Curti taught at Beloit College, Smith College, and Columbia University. Then in 1942, he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he taught for twenty-six years. He also taught in Japan, Australia, and India and lectured throughout Europe.

Read more about this topic:  Merle Curti

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    Alvina felt herself swept ... into a dusky region where men had dark faces and translucent yellow eyes, where all speech was foreign, and life was not her life. It was as if she had fallen from her own world on to another, darker star, where meanings were all changed.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)

    Kittering’s brain. What we will he think when he resumes life in that body? Will he thank us for giving him a new lease on life? Or will he object to finding his ego living in that human junk heap?
    —W. Scott Darling. Erle C. Kenton. Dr. Frankenstein (Sir Cedric Hardwicke)

    Children became an obsessive theme in Victorian culture at the same time that they were being exploited as never before. As the horrors of life multiplied for some children, the image of childhood was increasingly exalted. Children became the last symbols of purity in a world which was seen as increasingly ugly.
    C. John Sommerville (20th century)