Life and Career
Stampp was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1912; his parents were of German Protestant descent. His mother was a Baptist who forbade alcohol and strictly observed the Sabbath; his father, a tough disciplinarian in the old-world German style.
His family suffered through the Great Depression, "there was never enough money," but Stampp worked a number of small odd jobs as a teen, managing to save enough to afford tuition, first, at Milwaukee State Teachers' College, and then at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He earned both his B.A. and M.A. there in 1935 and 1936 respectively under the potent influences of Charles A. Beard (author of An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States) and William B. Hesseltine (known for coining the phrase about intellectual history: it's "like nailing jelly to the wall"). Hesseltine supervised Stampp's dissertation; Stampp remembered him as a "bastard" during this time, but the two managed to work together successfully through the completion of Stampp's Ph.D. in 1942. He then spent brief stints at the University of Arkansas and the University of Maryland, College Park, 1942–46, before joining the faculty at Berkeley. His teaching tenure ran 37 years; in 2006, Stampp celebrated six decades of association there. During his undergraduate years at Wisconsin, Stampp was a member of the Theta Xi Fraternity.
He died on July 10, 2009 in Oakland, California.
Read more about this topic: Kenneth M. Stampp
Famous quotes containing the words life and, life and/or career:
“The wind sprang up at four o’clock
The wind sprang up and broke the bells
Swinging between life and death”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The true poem is not that which the public read. There is always a poem not printed on paper,... in the poet’s life. It is what he has become through his work. Not how is the idea expressed in stone, or on canvas or paper, is the question, but how far it has obtained form and expression in the life of the artist. His true work will not stand in any prince’s gallery.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)