UMF Professor Emeritus of English Daniel P. Gunn Submitted photo

The University of Maine at Farmington English Program plans to honor longtime and recently retired UMF Professor Emeritus of English Daniel P. Gunn with a symposium to commemorate his legacy of educational excellence.

The celebration will be held from 8:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 14,  in the UMF Emery Community Arts Center on Main Street, according to a news release from April Mulherin, UMF associate director for Media Relations.

The day-long symposium is titled “Paying Attention: A Celebration of Dan Gunn and the Practice of Close Reading.”

The event is free and open to the public. Former students, colleagues and friends are particularly encouraged to attend the reception for 2022 retirees immediately following at 5 p.m.

This symposium will feature academic papers by Gunn’s colleagues, friends and former students, as well as short talks about his legacy at UMF and in the profession. The day will also feature a keynote presentation by Professor James Phelan, a scholar of narrative theory and the history of the novel.

Gunn joined the faculty at UMF in 1980 after receiving his Doctorate in English from Boston College. His career began less than a decade after the institution of Farmington’s first arts and sciences majors, and he was a central figure in the development of UMF’s identity as a public liberal arts college in succeeding years, working in particular to strengthen and expand the division of Humanities.

The cornerstone of Gunn’s teaching has been the practice of close reading, the careful, word-by-word analysis of a text that forms the basis for interpretation and response, to pay attention to every word — to hear the full range of meanings and associations in every word.

Daniel P. Gunn early in his teaching career. Submitted photo

“It was in Dan Gunn’s early morning English class that I first learned to read — really read — a poem,” said Noelle Dubay, UMF assistant professor of American literature and UMF graduate of the Class of 2013. “Dan taught that with enough patience and attention any text could open up wonderfully before you.”

To see a schedule of the symposium events, visit Celebration of Dan Gunn at wpsites.maine.edu.

For more information, email Kristen Case, UMF professor of English, at kristen.case@maine.edu.

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