Dr. Panzarella's Journey: 53 Years At Bonas
Dr. Patrick Panzarella has been a professor at St. Bonaventure since 1965, and is retiring after fifty-three years this semester. An anonymous donor granted a $600,000 professorship in his name to honor his service and dedication to the university. He’s been in a phase-out retirement plan for the past three years, in which he teaches during the Fall semester only, and would spend time in Florida during the spring. He’s planning on spending winters in Cape Coral, Florida, and summers in Delaware (he has homes in both). He has two daughters, one in Philadelphia and one in Virginia, and a son in Texas (though he doesn’t plan to live there, because he’d have to buy a big hat rack and a pickup truck with a gun rack). He’s excited to spend time with his daughters and grandchildren, and will be close to all of them while in Delaware. He grew up in New England and still has family there, as well. He loves being on the coast/ocean.
For his B.A. in English, he attended St. Mary’s College of California, which was his favorite college out of the three he went to. It was only thirty minutes from San Francisco, and close to Berkeley (which had 11 Nobel Prize winners on its faculty at the time), which he frequented. He enjoyed his World Classics Program, which required students for all eight semesters to read masterpieces from different phases and disciplines of Western literature. The college had experts come to campus for seminars throughout each semester. He studied at the University of Rhode Island for his M.A. and at SUNY Buffalo for his Ph.D.
He’s currently teaching four classes: Freshman Composition, Chaucer (Graduate and Undergraduate levels), and Survey of British Literature (which he’s taught every semester for all fifty-three years). He doesn’t have a favorite course, because it’s more about the students who engage with the material rather than the material itself. He believes he’s taught over forty courses here, and has led everything from coaching tennis to Business Writing. He often teaches courses on Medieval Literature (which is his specialty), Renaissance Literature, Survey of Literature, and Intro to Literature. The same material can get repetitive and old after so many years, and it’s the students that keep teaching the courses exciting and fresh. He’s enjoyed teaching newer courses, including Intellectual Journey and Art and Literature (which he taught in Italy as well).
Years ago, Dr. Panzarella participated in an NEH (National Endowment for Humanities) Seminar, in which he studied images of St. Francis in stone, glass, and wood that were created within the first century of his death (1226-1326). He learned that friars at the time became very involved in identifying their proper role within the structure of the church, and actions like hearing confessions caused conflict with local clergy members (who said they were stealing their parishioners). This was all so interesting to him that he decided to write a book on antifraternalism in 14th century England. After working on the project for a couple of years, a book came out on the same subject that was “better and more comprehensive” than what he was doing himself. He was very pleased with it and didn’t feel cheated on the project, because learning about it in the process was very enjoyable. He doesn’t have any current projects.
He started skiing at fifty-eight years old at Holiday Valley in Ellicottville, and would ski every single day (even before church and classes). He kept himself motivated by listening to French, Italian, and Spanish language tapes on the chairlift and on his runs. He said the best place for “actual skiing” was either Vale, Colorado, or Whistler, Canada (near British Columbia). The best place for atmosphere/culture for skiing was Switzerland, in the Swiss Alps/mountains near Interlaken.
If Dr. Panzarella wrote an autobiography, he’s not sure what he would name it, but he knows he would combine elements of the Odyssey, “a vision of the world,” and pilgrimage. He’d want it to reflect William Langland’s story of Piers Plowman and Dante’s Divine Comedy. It would involve an iconographic view of the world and the journey/perspective of the average person through life. If he could take the credit for any book ever written, he would choose Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, by Erich Auerbach. It’s a collection of explications on literature from the Old Testament and Odyssey through Virginia Wolfe in the 20th century. It deals with contextualizing and deeper reading of the literary works, points out difficult-to-notice meanings in Western literature across time, and explains each piece exceptionally.
A random fun fact: He’s memorized the first canto of Divine Comedy in medieval Italian, and is a devout reader of Dante.
A quote most properly applied to his career: “Gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.” -Chaucer
(Dr. Panzarella's love of this quote inspired the header on our "Faculty" blog section! He has touched the lives of so many - it was only right to pay homage!)
