Dear Members of the Community,
I write with the sad news that Deborah Knuth Klenck, Professor of English Emerita, passed away on Thursday, April 10, 2025, at the age of 72.
Deborah was born on July 12, 1952, in Flushing, New York. She received her BA magna cum laude from Smith College and her PhD from Yale University, where her mentors included George deForest Lord and Ronald Paulson.
Deborah joined ’s Department of English in 1978 and taught for 42 years, retiring in 2020. While her dissertation focused on 18th-century literature, she taught broadly in the department's curriculum, including courses in British poetry, John Milton, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Samuel Johnson, and William Shakespeare. The annual "Miltonathon" that she founded and ran provided students and faculty the remarkable opportunity to read all of Paradise Lost aloud in a single day. Deborah led the London English Study Group on seven occasions and chaired the Committee on Off-Campus Study for four years. Her work in the Core Curriculum included contributions to GNED Tier III and Legacies of the Ancient World (and its predecessors); it also involved leadership of GNED 101. She was a loyal and long-standing member of the Women's Studies community, serving for many years on the Advisory Board. She was active in the Jane Austen Society of North America, and her scholarly publications ranged widely across Austen's body of work. In 2004, she was the recipient of the Alumni Corporation Board of Directors Award for Distinguished Teaching.
Deborah’s love of music found expression throughout her life in participation in choral ensembles. At Smith, she toured Europe with the Smith Chamber Chorus, later singing occasionally with the Smith Alumnae Chorus. In Central New York, she sang with Tapestry: The All-Centuries Singers, as well as with the choir of St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Hamilton.
Deborah was renowned for her sparkling wit and her devotion to both her subject matter and her students. At the time of her retirement, a group of participants in her 2001 London Study Group, all members of the Class of 2002, put together a tribute to her. Their words testify to the kind of lasting influence that she had on students. One wrote, “As an educator now for many years, I can’t tell you how much Deborah Knuth Klenck’s wisdom, enthusiasm for the arts, and her way of caring for her students inform my own teaching.” The group’s observations concluded with this heartfelt message: “Thank you, thank you, thank you for illuminating texts, for your enthusiasm, for sharing the city you love with us, and for your commitment to showing us all the richness of literature and literary lives in London and beyond.” The care, the intelligence, the sheer delight in language and literature that these students saw illuminated all of Deborah’s work. She will be greatly missed.
Deborah is survived by her husband, Thomas Richard Klenck, of Hamilton; by her sisters, Penelope Knuth of Santiago, Chile; Nancy Thompson of North Bay, Ontario; and Jane Knuth of Boulder, Colorado; her children, Edward Scheinman of Washington, D.C., and Jane Hughes ’11, wife of James Hughes, of Boston; and her grandchildren, Theo and Nora.
A funeral service will be held at St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Hamilton, on April 22 at noon. Donations in memoriam may be sent to St. Thomas' Episcopal Church, the Brackett Foundation, and Abraham House in Rome.
May her memory be a blessing.
Lesleigh
Lesleigh Cushing
Provost and Dean of the Faculty
Mark S. Siegel University Professor in Religion and Jewish Studies