Louise Cowan

Mary Louise Cowan ( Shillingburg; December 22, 1916 – November 16, 2015) was an American literary critic and teacher, and wife of the physicist and University of Dallas president Donald Cowan. She taught at the University of Dallas, Texas Christian University, Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, and the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. As "one of the most famous faculty members" at the University of Dallas, she was a prominent figure in Dallas society, a mentor and friend to many Dallas dignitaries, and one of the city's leading intellectuals.

Early life and education Cowan was born Mary Louise Shillingburg in Fort Worth, Texas on December 22, 1916. She was first raised Methodist, but became agnostic atheist in childhood. She studied music and planned to take a scholarship at Skidmore College before reconsidering a musical career. She was the first woman teaching fellow at Vanderbilt. During this time, she completed her conversion to Catholicism in 1955, describing it as "completing her intellectual quest,"

The University of Dallas, 1959–1980 Cowan and her husband, Donald Cowan, moved to the University of Dallas in 1959, where she was recruited to chair the English department and he to chair the physics department. They worked for twenty years to establish the core curriculum at the University of Dallas. They sought to counter relativism and mediocrity by establishing "anti-egalitarian" models based on the classics of Western civilization. They replaced composition courses and textbooks with "great books" classics after arriving in 1959.

Although they were successful and popular for decades, conflicts with the Board of Managers led to a protracted leave of absence for both Cowan and her husband, beginning in 1977. The Cowans resigned in the summer of 1980 in protest over new and "utilitarian" administrative policies,

The Dallas Institute, 1980–1994 In 1980, Cowan, her husband, and four others, James Hillman, Robert Sardello, Joanne Stroud, and Gail Thomas, founded the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.

In "A Nation at Risk", Cowan's 1983 report for the Commission on Excellence in Education, she appraised in withering terms what she believed to be the deficiencies of public education. She compared the "mediocre educational performance" in the United States to "an act of war" on America's well-being as a society. and then continuing with The Epic Cosmos (1992). Among his commendatory comments about Cowan, President George Bush said "She ranks among the great builders of education in Texas." She completed her collaborative series on literary genres with The Tragic Abyss (2004) and The Prospect of Lyric (2012).

Influence Cowan was influential in fostering the liberal arts and helping shape core curricula for several liberal arts universities. The University of Dallas' curriculum in "literary tradition" was her single-handed design. In studies of the American South, she was an influential critic of William Faulkner, the Fugitive Group, and other Southern writers.

Personal life and death Cowan married Donald Cowan in 1939 after they met in a Presbyterian church choir when she was 20.

Cowan died on November 16, 2015, in Dallas, Texas, at the age of 98. She had seven living grandchildren and twelve living great-grandchildren at the time of her death.

Selected books The Fugitive Group: A Literary History (1959). The Southern Critics: An Introduction to the Criticism of John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Donald Davidson, Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, and Andrew Lytle (1971). The Terrain of Comedy (edited and introduced) (1984). Classic Texts and the Nature of Authority: An Account of a Principals' Institute Conducted by the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture (edited with Donald Cowan, with essays and commentary) (1993). Invitation to the Classics (edited with Os Guinness) (1998).