Ruth Dorgan retires from the English Department

Ruth Dorgan, assistant professor of English, has retired after 38 years of service at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

Dorgan has enjoyed teaching writing, Shakespeare, the literature of vampires and the legend of King Arthur.

She taught Writing to Sell and Selling What You Write, subjects she knows well after spending 20 years writing for the Sunday Milwaukee Journal’s "Wisconsin Magazine." Her first submission in 1971 was an essay about the fairy tale "Jack in the Beanstalk." She proposed that Jack was not a folk hero, but merely a juvenile delinquent who needlessly harassed the giant at the top of the towering vine.

The essay was accepted within two days, giving her the unrealistic notion that freelancing could be easy. But writing is hard work, she says. "I like to ‘have’ written."

Her numerous, sometimes controversial, essays brought her a certain amount of fame throughout the state, though it took her a while to realize it. One day her mail carrier said, "It’s so nice to have a celebrity on my route," and she replied, "Really, who is he?"

Dorgan recently returned from a semester abroad to London, accompanying 35 students and participating in activities which included a tour of the New Globe Theater and seeing three plays by the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was another opportunity to teach a course on the Bard which she loves to do.

She will go abroad again this year on a trip to Ireland with her sister. "County Cork is our second home," she says. She often combines trips to Ireland with trips to England, returning at least eight times—but she’s lost count.

Her interest in Ireland began when she was a child in Baton Rouge, La., listening to stories told by her Irish grandfather, Sidney Dorgan. She envisioned the place where her family originated as a sleepy Irish village called Ballydorgan in County Cork. She set out to find the place and it took a long time. When she did find it, it turned out to be—not a village, but a cow pasture. "The cows looked puzzled, but glad to see me," she says.

In the spring she sometimes believes she can smell Louisiana and yearns to go back, but for the time being she plans to stay in Wisconsin. "This is where my children and my friends are," she says. "It’s a sane and decent place in a crazy dangerous world."

Dorgan received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. She taught for one year at the University of Illinois while studying for a doctorate before coming to UWSP in 1962.

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