Dr. Nathalia Wright
Commission for Women's
Notable UT Woman Award Presentation
October 26, 2000
BIOGRAPHY
Nathalia Wright, a native of Athens, Georgia, received the B.A. degree
from Maryville College in 1933 and the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale
University in 1938 and 1949, respectively. Professor Wright joined the
University of Tennessee Department of English in 1949, where she became
an internationally recognized scholar in American literature. Among her
monographs and edited works are Melville's Use of the Bible (1948,
1969), Horatio Greenough, the First American Sculptor (1963), American
Novelists in Italy (1965), A Word Geography of England (with
Harold Orton) (1974), and The Correspondence of Washington Alston
(1993). Acclaimed after her first publications as "the most distinguished
woman scholar in the field of letters" she continued her scholarly work
up until recent times.
She was awarded an American Philosophical Society grant in 1952, a Guggenheim
Fellowship in 1953-1954, and an American Association of University Women
Fellowship in 1959-1960. In 1972, Wright was named a University Mace Bearer,
the first woman to be selected, and in 1973 was the Phi Kappa Phi Faculty
Lecturer. In 1975, she was designated an Alumni Distinguished Service
Professor. She was on the advisory council of the American Literature
Section of the Modern Language Association in 1971-1972 and chairman of
the section in 1977. Wright was vice president of the South Atlantic Modern
Language Association in 1977-1978 and 1978-1979 and a member of the Board
of Directors of the American Council of Learned Societies from 1971 to
1979. She is a member of the Phi Kappa Phi and Phi Beta Kappa national
honor societies. A Library Study was named in her honor in 1986. Professor
Wright retired from the University of Tennessee in 1982.
An inveterate traveler, she has enjoyed most her frequent studies in
France and Italy. She has long been a benefactor of higher education,
including her own undergraduate alma mater. Since retirement she
has lived at her home in Maryville, Tennessee.
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