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ObituariesIn Remembrance: Charles B. Teske ’62PhD Died on June 20 2019Charles Bahn Teske passed away on June 20, 2019. Since 1998 he had been retired from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where he was on the faculty for 28 years. The Olympian carried a full obituary on August 11, 2019. |
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I was fortunate to have Charles Teske as a teacher at Oberlin College in 1963, the year after he received his doctorate. He taught a brand new course, on folk ballads, which he enriched with his personal research, his dissertation having been on the literary models of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s LITERARY BALLADS. In the midst of the American folk song revival, this was heady stuff. Teske lectured without notes and in an ejaculatory style, allowing his knowledge to pour forth in bright flashes like glimpses into a mind still alive with the thrill of discovery.
Charlie was my professor at The Evergreen State College, and he was astonishing. He could play a trumpet like Dizzy Gillespie and talk about Blake or Wordsworth in a way that struck a lightning bolt through my consciousness. His seminar, with William Winden, "Two Revolutions in Art and Thought," changed my life and career forever -- it was an interdisciplinary investigation of art, music, literature, and life -- I decided then and there to become a professor myself. 32 years later, I'm so grateful to Charlie because my students would never have gained what they gained without him. Bright flashes, yes! Requeistcat in pacem Charlie!