A Life for Walt Whitman

A Life for Walt Whitman

Professor Folsom is one of the most important Americanist literary scholars in the United States. He has dedicated his life of research and teaching to the U.S. author Walt Whitman (1819-1892) – which is why some call him the “Whitman Pope.” He is the founder of the digital “Walt Whitman Archive,” probably the largest website ever dedicated to a writer, a central project in the international Digital Humanities (https://whitmanarchive.org/).

Professor Folsom receives his honorary doctorate for his extraordinary achievements in Americanist teaching and research, as well as in international educational exchange. In 1996, he was a Fulbright Professor at the Technical University of Dortmund. That year, Borussia Dortmund won the German soccer championship, an experience that deeply impressed the visiting professor. Since then, he has been a BVB fan and hardly ever misses one of the games, which he usually watches in the mornings with a time difference.

Since his Fulbright professorship, Ed Folsom has been responsible for the university partnership between the Technical University of Dortmund and the University of Iowa for more than twenty-five years. It was also TU Dortmund that hosted the first “International Whitman Week,” an annual academic event for graduate students that has since been held annually at various universities around the world, from Dortmund and Szczecin to Paris and Rome and on through São Paulo, Chicago, and New York City.

The eulogy for Ed Folsom will be delivered by fellow Iowan Christopher Merrill, writer and director of the International Writing Workshop, which promotes literature as a medium for cultural diplomacy.