Eugene Goodheart

Eugene Goodheart (June 26, 1931 – April 9, 2020) was an American literary scholar. He was Edytha Macy Gross Professor of Humanities at Brandeis University from 1983 to 2001.

Biography Goodheart was born on June 26, 1931, in Brooklyn. He received his B.A. from Columbia College, M.A. from the University of Virginia, and Ph.D. from Columbia University in English and Comparative Literature in 1953. At Columbia, Goodheart studied under Lionel Trilling. Among his students at Brandeis University was Chinese American writer Ha Jin.

Goodheart received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1970 in literary criticism. He was also a National Humanities Center fellow in 1987–1988. He received an honorary doctorate from the City University of New York in 2014, for his “brilliant and provocative contributions to humanist criticism and scholarship.”

Personal life and family Goodheart died on April 9, 2020, at his home in Watertown, Massachusetts. According to biographer Zachary Leader, Bellow asked Goodheart on his deathbed, "Was I a man or was I a jerk?" To which Goodheart replied, "You were a good man."

He was married to Wellesley College anthropologist Joan Bamberger until his death.