J. Robert Barth

professor, English, Boston College

J. Robert Barth was a scholar of the British Romantic poets and the former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Barth first came to the University as the Thomas I. Gasson Professor in 1985. As dean, he established the music and theater departments, oversaw the opening of the McMullen Museum of Art, and was the first chair of the Boston College Arts Council, which, among other things, organizes BC's annual Arts Festival. He was also known for his old-fashioned and enthusiastic declamations of poetry, and recorded two CDs, including one featuring the poetry of Wordsworth and the other poems by Francis Thompson and Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ.