If you would like to add a memory or tribute please email it to iash@ed.ac.uk
Per Ahlander – University of Edinburgh; IASH Fellow 2010-11
Terribly sad news – Susan Manning will be very deeply missed. With her enthusiasm, warm personality and wide-ranging scholarly interests she was a source of inspiration to so many of us. Always very much in the middle of everything – both in life generally and in academia; there would have been so much more in store for her. I feel privileged to have known her ever since I was an IASH Fellow a few years ago and my heart goes out to her family and close friends.
Thomas Ahnert – University of Edinburgh
Susan Manning was a brilliant, inspiring scholar and a wonderful person. So many people benefited from her generosity, her incredible breadth of learning and interests, her intellectual rigour, and her shrewd judgement. She was enormously supportive and kind towards innumerable doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, at Edinburgh and elsewhere. Like many others, I am deeply indebted to her. Edinburgh’s IASH flourished under her directorship, and she made profound and lasting contributions to many different areas of academic life, in the United Kingdom and all over the world. She will be very deeply missed.
Wiljan van den Akker – Utrecht University
Although I truly believe in the power of poetry, the line by Dylan Thomas, ‘And death shall have no dominion’, suddenly appears to be thin in the light of the fact that Susan is no longer amongst us. Her death strikes as lightning by clear daylight. I have lost one of the brightest, liveliest, creative colleagues. But my grief is thin compared to what her family is feeling. My warm sympathy goes to them, my warmest to Susan, wherever she may be.
Richard Alford – Charles Wallace India Trust
We at the Charles Wallace India Trust were very sorry indeed to learn of Susan’s death. For many years she presided over the Fellowship which enabled Indians to spend time at IASH, welcoming them warmly, making sure they spent their time profitably and building lasting links with India.
Sarah Anderson – University of Edinburgh
Susan seemed to have a limitless number of plans for the future, and similar amounts of energy when executing them or encouraging others to do so. Every few months, I would receive an email from yet another IASH scholar working on a project with her guidance.
Going for a meeting at IASH is always a relief – it is one of the few places in the University where you feel there’s still time to think. This is a legacy of Susan’s personality. I’m sad that she won’t get to take IASH through into its next phase.
My sincere condolences to her friends and family.
Linda Andersson Burnett – University of Edinburgh; IASH Fellow 2012-13
I was blessed to have had Susan as my mentor over many years. She supervised my MSc and PhD, and latterly gave me the privilege of working closely with her during my fellowship at IASH. Like other young scholars from across the world, I benefited immensely from her incredible breadth of knowledge and her sound advice. She had a magical ability to help students unlock their own research problems through dialogue.
Susan leaves behind her an astounding body of work and she will continue to serve as a role model of kindness, integrity and academic excellence for the large number of people whose heart she touched.
She will always be missed.
My thoughts are with her family.
Srinivas Aravamudan – Dean of Humanities, Duke University; Past President, Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes
This is indeed shockingly sad news.
With great fondness, I remember Susan’s inspirational vision at so many different occasions over the last decade. The CHCI Dialogues of Enlightenment conference hosted by her team at IASH came together with wonderful musical, discursive, and culinary elan. Susan’s passion for the overlooked and underprivileged within institution-building, as we go forward to network the international humanities the world over, should–and will–always be with us. Many of us have indeed lost a great colleague, an affectionate friend, and a humanistic stalwart. In quiet recognition of her wonderful spirit and my heartfelt condolences to her family and friends.
Erin Atchison – University of Auckland
As one of Susan’s many PhD students now scattered around the globe, the sad news of her passing came with the bitter disappointment of not having seen her in a number of years. Nevertheless, Susan’s tireless support and encouragement, both academic and personal, knew no geographical barriers. She was the very of best of supervisors and advocates during my time at Edinburgh, and her enthusiastic interest in me and my work continued on well after graduation. It has been such a privilege to know Susan, to work with her, and to be guided by her. I join the chorus of so many people who will miss her tremendously.
Thierry Balzacq – University of Namur; IASH Fellow 2012-13
This is very sad news. The IASH has lost its soul. I feel extremely lucky to have met Susan during my stay here.
John Bannon – University of Adelaide; IASH Fellow 2009
Very sorry to hear of Susan’s death. As a Visiting Fellow to IASH in 2009 I found her to be very welcoming and committed to the collegiality of the Institute.
Ian Baucom – President, Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes; Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University
For the past eight years, Susan served on the advisory board of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI). The news of her passing has come as a stunning blow to all of us and we are in profound sorrow at her loss. As all these eloquent testimonials bear witness, and as everyone who had the good fortune of knowing and working with her knows so well, Susan was an inspiration: a person of great wisdom and joyful wit, a field-shaping scholar, a leading voice in advancing the civic purpose of the humanities. She and her colleagues at IASH hosted a stunning annual meeting of CHCI in 2009, gathering us for a plenary session in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament, a recital in St. Cecilia’s Hall, and conversations and debate across the city. We are boundlessly thankful for all those acts of hospitality, for her years of devoted work on the CHCI board, and, above all, for the gift of warm, committed, enduring friendship she gave to so many of us. We will miss her enormously. We share our deepest sympathy and heartfelt condolences with all her family, her colleagues, and her friends around the world.
Katrin Berndt – Bremen University; IASH Fellow 2009 and 2010
I am still shocked at this terribly sad news. Susan was a brilliant, inspiring, and incredibly generous scholar. I am deeply grateful that I had the honour to meet her. She gave me encouragement and support as director of IASH and as my referee, and I have benefited enormously from her genuine kindness and the breadth of her scholarship. Her knowledge was impressive, wonderfully insightful, and it was distinguished by a keen sense of curiosity. To me, Susan will always represent the best of the humanities, a true scholar and a warm and engaging person who will be so much missed.
Marco Bernini – University of Durham; IASH Fellow 2011-12
Academic life forces many of us to move from country to country, from city to city. This experience can be highly enhancing as well as deeply problematic. It all depends entirely on the (intellectual, human, practical) qualities of the persons guiding the institutions hosting you. Susan for me had been the spotless host, mentor and supervisor during my period at IASH. She made – teaming with Anthea and Donald – the IASH a unique intellectual harbour and a human shelter, endlessly shaping and challenging our postdoctoral minds with fresh and unforeseen ideas. I owe to her the most positive things that happened to me since my landing in this country.”
Colleen Glenney Boggs
Susan’s death comes as a shock and fills me with a profound sense of loss. I first met her early in my career, at a Symbiosis Conference in Edinburgh, when I was still figuring out many of the contours and arguments of my book on “Transnationalism and American Literature.” I knew Susan of course through her published work, and found that the formidable intellect with which I was well familiar was connected to an absolutely lovely person. Susan was probing and rigorous, kind and generous — an ideal of what we as academics might aspire to be. This past summer, i had the pleasure of seeing her at the CHCI convention in Australia. We kept making plans to talk, and finally, on the last day, found a quite niche for a shared lunch. She was exhausted from finishing a monograph and directing the institute, but full of her characteristic enthusiasm for the work at hand and the work ahead. It will take some time for this loss to register, and the gap will remain. My thoughts are with Susan’s family and colleagues, her friends and students, with sincere condolences.
Nadine Boljkovac – IASH Fellow 2010
fellow Cambridge Newnhamite, (Brown University)
I am deeply saddened by the loss of a wonderful woman and mentor, whose brilliance and kindness will remain profoundly inspirational. Dear Professor Manning, with deepest gratitude and respect always.
Marianne Boruch – Purdue University; IASH Fellow 2012
The silence following this terrible news about Susan is huge–in me and around me. Outside, even the pines in their snowy light are altered, shot through with shadow now.
We met because I was wildly fortunate, given a Fulbright Visiting Professorship in English last winter and spring, and Susan offered me a fellowship at IASH as well, a sweet double-whammy of luck, so it still seems to me. As an American poet in the Institute and not a scholar in the strictest sense, I felt particularly surprised by such generosity, but this is just more evidence of the way Susan cast her net–and welcome–to include a wide range of human inquiry. From the first I was struck by her quietly wry take on things, her grounded good will, her immediate and remarkable intelligence. I recall so many things: her wonderful talk on Robert Burns that traced, through painting, the historical link between an older Burns and a young Walter Scott; her steady curiosity–and occasional comic relief–as she served as respondent for the weekly Fellows’ talks at IASH; her encouraging, tactful approach to all of us in the course of our work there and our adjustment to a new city. And of course so important was–and will continue to be–her own scholarship in British and American literature, her efforts to understand how our two cultures connect. (I cherish our discussion of Flannery O’Connor, for instance, which followed my talk on her work, O’Connor being one of Susan’s favorite writers for a host of reasons.) Next to the relationships she had with others who knew and loved her for years, our acquaintanceship was only a small drop. But I am deeply thankful for it.
Susan was and remains one of the great spirits, made more so for her refusal to put herself above anyone. Or “refusal” wasn’t in the picture at all. Such kindness and genuine grace came naturally to her.
Toni Bowers – University of Pennsylvania
So sad a loss, of a wonderful colleague and friend. She will be greatly missed.
Rowan Boyson
So sad to hear this news. I met Susan at a workshop in St. Andrews in 2010 and a conference at Glasgow in 2011, and we corresponded a few times. I remember her discussing brilliant new ideas on character, Adam Smith, and war, and I was awaiting her book with excitement. As many others have commented below, she was a model of enthusiastic, open-minded and sharp-witted scholarship, and she was tremendously warm and encouraging to junior scholars. My thoughts are
with her family, friends and colleagues.
Rosi Braidotti – Director, Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University; IASH Advisory Board Member; ECHIC, CHCI
I am deeply saddened by the loss of my dear friend Susan: an internationally recognized distinguished scholar, Susan was first and foremost a fabulous colleague, an amazing human being and a role-model for so many of us, in so many different areas of study and stations of life. Susan knew how to combine intelligence with wit, humour with a deep sense of moral elegance, discipline with courtesy. I worked with Susan for many years as member of the IASH Advisory Board and saw the Institute blossom under her leadership and develop working relations to some of the best universities in the global arena. She taught me so much, both professionally and personally, I shall be forever grateful to her. Susan’s commitment to the Humanities in the contemporary university was an inspiration to us all. She translated her passionate convictions into projects and joint activities in a number of international organizations devoted to defending the Humanities and was a founding member of the European Consortium of Humanities Institutes and Centres (ECHIC). Susan Manning’s vision of the civic responsibility of the Humanities added a much-needed social dimension to current debates about academic excellence and the relevance of higher education. More than anyone else I have worked with, Susan contributed to restore an aura of cultural authority to scholarship in the Humanities and to highlight the impact of university research upon citizens in extra-academic environments and in society as a whole. It was a privilege to know her and a pleasure to collaborate with Susan. I shall miss her greatly.
My sincere condolences to her family and friends.
Bruce Buchan – Griffith University; IASH Fellow 2010 and 2012-13
Susan Manning will be deeply mourned by all her friends and colleagues in Australia and worldwide. She imbued IASH with great warmth and a genuine breadth of scholarly vision. Her enthusiasm for research across the Humanities inspired the many of us who had the privilege of meeting her through the Institute. Susan leaves an outstanding legacy of scholarship and collegiality and will be sadly missed. Bruce Buchan, Griffith University.
Alexander Buczynski – IASH Fellow 2007
I was very saddened to hear of Prof Susan Manning’s death. I remember her as a very kind and warm person, always ready to help and advice. Thank you dear Susan for the many lives you have touched.
My thoughts go out to her family and friends.
Helena Buescu – Centre for Comparative Studies, University of Lisbon; CHCI Board Member
I met Susan in the context of CHCI, a Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes in whose Board we both served. In the several occasions I was with her I was deeply impressed by her commitment, her enthusiasm and, perhaps mostly, her commitment to truthfulness to her and our work. I always saw her act in the firm conviction that we are doing something that is important, provided that we are truthful to what we do. This conviction has been a lesson that I think all who had the chance of getting to know Susan learned and treasure. I must also add that we have lost someone whose importance in the European arena will be sorely missed. Again, her devotion to topics such as the Humanities and the Public sphere have inspired a lot of us in many aspects of our present and future work.
I would like to leave a heartfelt message of condolences to all her family, friends, and colleagues at the University of Edinburgh. It was a privilege to know Susan Manning.
Shannon Chamberlain
Her work was part of the reason that I ended up in 18th-century studies. What a generous, thorough scholar; what a terrible loss.
Jim Chandler – University of Chicago
To know Susan was to admire her. To know her well was to aspire to be her friend. To know her work, on the page and in the many institutions she tirelessly served, was to recognize intellectual and academic virtue of the highest order. What an enormous and untimely loss. It is some small consolation to know that more of her work is on the way. The manuscript for her recently last book, *The Poetics of Character*, had just about reached my desk for final review when Penny Fielding wrote with the terrible news last week. It is a book Susan struggled with, partly because of her health, and partly because it took such intellectual risks, which proved beautifully gauged in the end. It is pure Susan: its scope is Transatlantic, its method is experimental, its preoccupations are those of her beloved Scottish Enlightenment. Its apposite title, too, makes it a fit epitaph for someone of such an impressively well-formed character. The book will probably be out within the year, but how very sad that we will no longer get to talk about its provocative arguments with Susan herself.
Chinesegirl.Chanel
Rest in peace, Susan. Your passion, your scholarship will always inspire me.
I am so lucky to have you supervise my Msc.
Will Christie – University of Sydney; IASH Fellow 2003, 2007, 2012
An affectionate friend and colleague as well as a deep scholar and acute critical intellect, Susan was an exemplar of the humanities she professed. It is not surprising so many of us should feel this way.
Lorraine Code – York University, Toronto, Canada; IASH Fellow 2011
Dear Susan,
Thank you for being you: for your shining intelligence, your warmth, generosity, and kindness. You have made the world a better place.
Tim Collins (IASH Fellow 2010) and Reiko Goto (IASH Fellow 2012)
Our condolences to friends and family. Incredibly sad when an errant wind blows out a candle that sheds light and warms the world. Susan has a lovely presence in our memory and her imprint on IASH is a lasting one.
Anne Cranny-Francis – University of Technology, Sydney; IASH Fellow 2008
I am very sorry to read this very sad news. As a Visiting Fellow at IASH for some months in 2008 I came to know and respect Susan for her warmth, enthusiasm, generosity, and breadth of intellectual interest. I saw her again briefly last year in Canberra, where her great personal warmth was again evident, as was the deep respect in which she was held by scholars from across the world. This is a great loss to intellectual life, particularly the Humanities, world-wide.
Robert Crawford – School of English, University of St Andrews
A great scholar and a true friend. I think we were first in touch in the 1980s, and I was delighted when Susan came to Edinburgh where it meant a lot to her to be part of a community of scholars working on Scottish literature, and on links between Scottish literature and American literature in particular. My favourite memory of her is as a commanding, breathtakingly well informed speaker at Berkeley, and as a lively conversationalist at a Scott conference in Oregon: the conversation ranged from Scott to circus skills! On that occasion I realised she had a resilient bravery, not least when it came to travel. She served as mentor and friend to many around the globe. Both she and her scholarship will be remembered.
Thom Cross
As one who is not an academic (but with an abiding interest in the 18th C) I attended IASH conferences chaired by Prof Manning. Though intimidated often by many of the participants, it was Prof Manning’s warmth, kindness and abounding generosity of intellect that gave me the courage to continue. I am so sorry to hear of her passing.
Janette Currie
Shocked and heart-sore to hear this very sad news. Sue was a wonderful, uplifting, generous scholar. I send my condolences to her family, friends around the globe and to her colleagues at Edinburgh.
Leith Davis – Simon Fraser University, Vancouver; IASH Fellow 1997
What a deep loss for all who knew and admired Sue personally and for the academic and literary world in general. Sue provided a bright light to shine the way into new areas of research. She was thoughtful, eloquent and brilliant at making insightful connections that left many of us wondering why no one had made such connections before. She was also a truly generous scholar who was able to bring others together in productive conversations. The many conversations that Sue started — literally around the world — will continue as her legacy, but she will be sorely missed.
John Docker – IASH Fellow 2008
Ann Curthoys and I are deeply saddened to hear of the death of Susan Manning. Susan hosted us twice at IASH, we very much appreciated her quiet dignity and intellectual strength, we will always associate Edinburgh, a city we love, with her, and will always remember too our final cup of coffee with her, just before we left our stay at IASH, and shared wide ranging reflections about intellectual life.
Josie Dixon
This is indeed a terrible shock. Susan was a terrific scholar, a warm and vital person, and a live wire in all the projects she undertook. She was the source of sound, learned and sympathetic advice on many publishing projects during my days as commissioning editor in Cambridge, and warmly supportive of my own career moves (bringing her next book to Palgrave after I moved there as publishing director, and taking an interest in more recent research training and consultancy projects). It’s sadly ironic that when we were in touch last year she wrote that she was in better health and relishing the freedom which that brought. The last book, written in that spirit, will surely be a fine monument to Susan’s influential contribution to many fields. Among the many conferences where we coincided, I am remembering one afternoon (during a meeting of Romanticists at Blairquhan in 1998) visiting Culzean castle, where we wandered around the Robert Adam interiors and the gardens with their view of Ailsa Craig out to sea and hundreds of gannets on the shore. She will be greatly missed.
William J Dominik – IASH Fellow 2006-7
I will always remember my time at the Institute in 2006-2007 and how Susan Manning made it possible for me to be there and contributed so much to my wonderful stay. I will always remember her with fondness and respect. . . .
Emma Dummett – IASH Fellow 2010
Susan’s generosity, both of spirit and intelligence, made her an inspiration. As a post-doctoral fellow at IASH in 2010, I received very wise and timely advice from her and will always remember her kindness. I also remember a keynote lecture which she gave at a conference in Glasgow in December 2010 which seemed to me a masterpiece of scholarship – deft, wide-ranging and ultimately very moving. Susan, like the institute she directed, embodied the best of her discipline, combining scholarship with integrity, humanity and generosity. The Humanities are the poorer for her loss.
Ian Duncan – University of California, Berkeley
Susan Manning was a superb scholar, at the forefront of the various fields she worked in: Scottish literature, transatlantic literary relations, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary history. She was more than that — she was an exceptionally decent and kind person. Her friendship warmed us, her example showed us what we could try and become. Her death is an awful loss, for the scholarly community, for all those who knew and loved her.
Liz Elliott – University of Edinburgh; IASH Fellow 2006
Susan was one of the most generous and supportive academics I have ever met, and one of the kindest human beings. She will be very sorely missed
David Farrier – University of Edinburgh
Susan was a wonderful, irreplaceable colleague, whose generosity to new members of staff I was very grateful to experience when I first arrived in Edinburgh. It is wonderful to read here how widely her warmth and influence was felt, although it also sharpens the loss.
Maria Filippakopoulou – University of Edinburgh; IASH Fellow 2008-9
Archontissa Susan… Archontissa, in Greek, means woman of great power and woman of great generosity – a woman whose power to guide or lead people springs from her ability to give, boundlessly. For me, Susan is, has always been archontissa as she has always been ‘my Susan’. It was serendipity that brought her in my life in 2001, when my doctoral studies shifted towards the transatlantic paradigm she was the engine of in Scotland. I am one of the very many people she has supported and helped consistently, fully, attentively; one of the many who she has benefited in more ways than I can describe: from PhD, to first academic job, to the relentless realities of family life, to the exciting possibilities of new research, she’s done way more than what most academics contractually bound to mentor, collaborate or project-manage are prepared to do. For that, I can only feel, like myriads of people out there, truly blessed for having my archontissa Susan in my life here in Scotland.
She is source of my attachment to the University of Edinburgh for she embodies, in my eyes, this archetype, the enlightened academic: a superb mind, plus the humility of the most loving parent one could imagine, an undiminished source of inspiration through her work, ethos and praxis. Not once did I leave a meeting with her without being dazzled and charmed, wishing, no, burning to match her terrific way of thinking, her respectful attention, her endearing care. Archontissa! — for one moment I see your face smiling at me, leaning forward to capture a nuance in conversation, share a joke about a toddler resisting the sleep routine, teach without never appearing to do so. That gorgeous face — that kid! — imprinted on my gaze at the outside world, is desperately missed now. Her miraculous empathy and discerning generosity in making people feel welcome for what they had to bring and what they could achieve have come naturally to her; and yet, they appear to be also the result of a mind made up long ago, an unwavering belief in people despite the unquestionably hard work virtual community-building involves, alongside, as it were, all the other things that life throws at us all. Being for a while receivers of Susan’s contagious collegiality, her empathy which readily turned into practical support and lasting encouragement, we now have to, haltingly, teach ourselves to maintain it in our relationships, somehow.
The brilliance of her academic work is not disconnected, I strongly believe, from her solid way of relating to others and their set of circumstances in an effort to bring the best out of them. As indeed she did, again and again, tirelessly and unselfishly, here and elsewhere in the world. For the many ‘families’ of academics that Susan has herself, single-handedly nourished throughout her days, for individuals such as myself, there is little comfort to be had other than the utter blessing of having her – alas, too briefly — as our ‘mistress’. My archontissa.
David Finkelstein – University of Dundee; IASH Fellow 2007
A warm, humane woman, sharp of eye and warm of heart. A great loss to the Scottish academic community, to Transatlantic studies, to IASH and to friends and colleagues. Her presence and commitment at IASH made it the most welcoming of places, and her absence will be keenly felt.
Katherine Firth
I was lucky enough to have been taught by Sue Manning at Newnham College, Cambridge. Boswell and Johnson’s accounts of their travels through the Western Isles of Scotland became the (perhaps unusual) basis of my teaching on Romanticism (now at the University of Melbourne), but more importantly, when I think about the teacher I’m trying to be, or become, that person looks most like Sue. I’m just sorry I never said that to her, directly.
Margret Frenz – IASH Fellow 2010-11
The news of Susan’s death came as a great shock to me. With her sharp intellect and warm generosity she created a congenial space at IASH where intellectual exchange and academic work could flourish. I will always remember Susan’s kindness, openness and support. My thoughts are with her family at this difficult time.
Frances Gallagher
It is very sad that Susan is no longer with us. Her charm ,intelligence and wit were the hallmark of her being. She was humble in success and fully understood the great need to enable the further development of human capability by connecting and working with a range of peoples. I was privileged to work in partnership with Susan-in my position of National Chair RSA Scotland.[2010-2012]. It was a great honour and good fun to work Susan as part of our collaborative group [Creative Connected Communities Scotland]. Together we provided opportunities to many others to enable them to further develop their understanding of the needs of society in a 21st Century world.
I send my sincere condolences to her family and know that she will be sadly missed. Susan loved her family and talked about them with great affection.
Debjani Ganguly – Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University
I heard about Susan’s death from my frail mother’s home in Mumbai. In a year that already begun with losses, real and imminent, Susan’s news was almost too much to bear. We had only just shared so many wonderful conversations at the Canberra CHCI conference last June. She had once again renewed her invitation to visit IASH. Always generous, attentive and gracious, Susan had become a dear friend and confidant at our CHCI meetings. I admired her quiet, yet firm brilliance, her robust social conscience – so very rare at the highest echelons of academia – and, yes, her stoic acceptance of intellectual and moral hurdles. I don’t remember if I hugged her warmly enough when we said our rushed goodbyes at the end of our June and again our October meets. But I am sure she knew she was surrounded by friends that October evening in Oxford when we drank to her health and thanked her for her service to the CHCI board. We’ll miss you Susan.??
Axel Gelfert – National University of Singapore; IASH Fellow 2009; 2011
I was saddened to learn about Susan Manning’s sudden and untimely death. Not only was she an impressive scholar, but, as the director of IASH, she also cultivated an atmosphere of enlightened dialogue and civilised debate between academics of all stripes. As an IASH visiting fellow in 2009 and 2011, I was time and again impressed by her intellectual generosity, unwavering support for interdisciplinary research, and her genuine sense of curiosity. She will be much missed.
Pamela Gilbert – University of Florida; IASH Fellow 2011
It is hard to believe that such a vital spirit has left us. I wish I had known Susan better and longer–we met when I was at IASH for two months last year. But even In two months, I was able to see why Susan had such an effect, both galvanizing and nurturing, on the scholarship of so many– and why so many also counted her as a close friend. She will be dearly missed. My thoughts are with her family and colleagues.
Paul Giles – University of Sydney
I never knew Susan well personally, although we had many professional dealings over the course of some twenty years, ever since she came over from Cambridge to give a talk at the University of Nottingham when I was working there in 1995. A mutual colleague at Bristol said that Susan flourished academically after her move from Cambridge to Edinburgh, and I can readily see why that would have been so, since her particular genius was an openness to accommodating and reconciling opposing points of view, something that made her particularly gifted in the various editorial and administrative roles she assumed at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. I stayed with her family in 2002 when I was giving a talk up in Edinburgh, and I was struck by how comfortable she seemed in that environment. Indeed, much of Susan’s own work, concerned as it was with issues of transatlantic and cross-border negotiations, seemed to transpose that principle of civil conversation and dialogue into a more formal realm. I had various e-mail exchanges with her since my move to Australia, most recently when I contributed an essay to the Transatlantic Literary Studies book that she edited with Eve Tavor Bannet, and I always found her delightful to work with, a model editor who (somewhat unusually, in my experience) combined the traits of being at the same time knowledgeable, efficient and courteous. Although she died much too young, Susan nevertheless made a substantial contribution, both directly and indirectly, to the growth and development of transnational scholarship.
Martin Gill – Åbo Akademi University; IASH Fellow 2012
I am deeply saddened to hear this news. I only met Susan for the first time in October at the start of a two-month fellowship at IASH, but in that short time came to experience the extraordinary, productive atmosphere that she created in the Institute, as well as the generosity of her support and encouragement. It was a privilege to take part in the work in progress seminars, of which the highlight was Susan’s quite astonishing capacity to make pertinent connections across an impossibly wide range of topics. The memory of this will live with me, but the world of ideas will be so much the poorer without her.
Michael Graham – IASH Fellow 2011
This is terrible news. Susan was such a vibrant person, with a tremendously broad range of interests and knowledge. As an IASH visiting fellow a couple of years ago, I was so grateful for her support and constantly impressed with the ways she nurtured and hosted the very eclectic IASH community, through her careful listening, her penetrating questions, and her good-natured sociability. It’s hard for me to imagine IASH without her, and I can only hope that her spirit will continue to enrich the institute.
Richard Gravil
Susan was simply an amazing human being; warm, resilient, responsive, a role model, one might say, except that of course she was also inimitable. In the approximately 480 days I have spent at one annual conference, over the last forty-two years or so, I have heard perhaps two or three people who could contribute to discussions after lectures and papers, as knowledgeably as Susan, whatever topic might arise. But I have never met anyone whose interventions were not merely knowledgeable, to the point, fluent and at ease, but quiet, thoughtful, creative, respectful, and nurturing. She will be enormously missed.
Morwenna Griffiths – University of Edinburgh
I wish I had known her better. I loved the IASH seminars that I went to where she was chairing and asking questions. She set a sharply intelligent, warm, friendly, creative ethos to the seminars. Such a rare talent. I was appalled to hear the news.
Simon Haines
A terrible shock and a huge loss. My deepest sympathies to Susan’s family. Of our various conversations over the years the two that stand out in my memory are from Blairquhan in 1998 and Sai Kung just last year–and both of them were about families as much as books. Warmth and intelligence are rare companions, and Susan had so much of both. It’s going to be hard to adjust to her absence. It came far too soon.
Ruth Hallinan
My sympathies and condolences to Professor Manning’s family and friends. I was fortunate enough to have Professor Manning as my dissertation supervisor several years ago. She was an incredible scholar and a wonderfully warm person.
James Harris – University of St. Andrews
Sue helped me organize the 2011 tercentenary Hume conference. But ‘helped’ is not a strong enough word. In many ways, she, along with Anthea Taylor, made the conference possible. This is just one example among very many of what Sue contributed to the study of 18th-century Scotland. She is irreplaceable, and is sorely missed.
David Harrower – IASH Fellow 2004
Very sorry to hear this sad news. During my time writing a play at the Institute as part of the Edinburgh International Festival fellowship, Susan was never less than hugely friendly, enthusiastic and encouraging – and always ready to suggest books or articles to track down. Ever the enquiring, engaged mind. She will be sorely missed.
David Harrower, Glasgow
Tony Hasler – Saint Louis University
I am terribly shocked and upset. I got to know Susan when I was still a graduate, in a Cambridge that back then seemed to have little interest in Scottish writing, and will be forever grateful for her help. She was brilliant and wide-ranging, possessed of an excellence that didn’t need egocentricity. The testimonies to her kindness and decency say it all. I will miss her very much.
Richard Hill – Chaminade University
I’m so sorry to hear of Susan’s passing. I only met her a handful of times, and was hoping at one point to work for her on STAR, but for various reasons I couldn’t. I always regretted it because I remember such a warm, friendly, supportive and encouraging person. She was a wonderful support to me behind the scenes at Edinburgh. My deepest condolences to family, friends and colleagues.
Sándor Hites – Hungarian Academy of Sciences; IASH Fellow 2012
Terrible news indeed, I’ll always remember her kindness as she welcomed me at IASH last year.
Poul Holm – Trinity College Dublin
Susan had an impact far beyond the normal reach of disciplinary and institutional colleagues. I shall remember her with a warmth in my heart and feel a pang at not having had the opportunity to know her for more than a few years. I came to know Susan as a cheerful, intellectually astute and wonderfully supportive co-founder of the European Consortium of Humanities Institutes and Centres. She had the breadth of knowledge and experience which made her small figure punch so much above her weight. She will be sorely missed.
Alessandro Iannucci – IASH Fellow 2008
I can’t find the words to remember a woman and a researcher so kind. I should put in this tribute the the words of Archilochus of Paros (fr. 13 W. with some modifications):
nobody nor the city will find fault with our mournful grief
when taking pleasure in festivities,
such fine woman did the wave of the loud-roaring sea wash down
and we have lungs swollen with pain.
But yet the gods, my friends, for our incurable pains
have set powerful endurance as an antidote;
this one has at one time, and another at another;
now it has turned to us, and we groan out at a bloody wound,
but then again it will pass to others.
Come, with all haste bear up, thrusting off womanish grief
Margaret Kelleher
I’d like to record my deep appreciation of Susan’s deep personal and professional generosity. I have worked with her through the board of CHCI and am so grateful for her wise counsel and wonderful example of leadership, vision and integrity. My deep sympathies to Howard and daughters, and to Susan’s colleagues; and wish you the solidarity of knowing how greatly Susan is esteemed and missed.
James Kelly – IASH Fellow 2005
My deepest sympathies to Susan’s family and colleagues. I was lucky enough to know her when I read for a PhD at Edinburgh, and will miss her warmth, support, and great learning. It’s a devastating loss.
John Kerrigan
What desperately sad news. Susan was much too young to leave her family, her research and her teaching. She was a hugely respected colleague at Cambridge, I met her again in Edinburgh, flourishing among her friends and students, and I learned a lot from her work. The photo at the top of this page brings back her warmth and character.
Josephine Landback
Dr. Manning gave me a chance to develop professionally and intellectually which I will never forget. All my deepest sympathies.
Bob Lawson-Peebles
This is terrible news, for Susan’s family, for Edinburgh University, and for the wider community of scholars in the field of Transatlantic Cultural Relations. Susan was an unusual and outstanding academic, combining kindness with the keenest intellect. I have benefitted from her advice and support over many years, and was hoping that Susan and STAR would take part in an exciting new project. Now, it is sadly too late.
Ming Lim – University of Leicester; IASH Fellow 2010
Dear Susan,
You were untiring in your support of the Fellows at the Institute. IASH has been supremely fortunate to have had your potent and courageous leadership. At times, I could hardly believe your utter generosity in facilitating the work of scholars from all over the world in the midst of a hectic schedule. I cannot believe you will not be there when I visit next. You will be remembered as long as I live.
Judith Luna – Senior Commissioning Editor, Oxford World’s Classics
I have just learnt of Susan’s death, and am greatly saddened and shocked by the news. I worked with Susan on three editions for Oxford World’s Classics, Washington Irving’s Sketch-Book, Crèvecouer’s Letters from an American Farmer, and Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun, and she was an editor’s dream: the consummate professional, responsive to comments, thoroughly in command of her material and adaptable to the series’ requirements. Above all, she was a real pleasure to deal with, and beyond these commissioned editions she was always generous with her time if I sought her advice in other areas. I am so sorry to hear of her untimely death.
Deidre Lynch – University of Toronto; IASH Fellow 2011-12
Susan was such good company—both on the printed page and in person. I will miss her intellectual brilliance and miss how she managed to combine that brilliance with a generosity of spirit that brought out the best in her interlocutors. I came away from every conversation I ever had with Susan over the decade a half in which I knew her feeling not only dazzled by her erudition but also as if I understood my own ideas a bit better than I had at the start of our talk. (Some of my doctoral supervisees have also availed themselves of her generosity—and they would, I am sure, say just the same.) Her passing is a blow to the humanities and the academic world in general. I will be doing my best to honour her memory—and with it her optimism about the project of the humanities and her determination to preserve the best of our academic culture for a future generation of scholars.
Susan would herself be a bit wry about the lurking grandiosity of that last statement, so let me add that I will always treasure the memory of some rather giggly meals we had together over the years. We had fun!
Diarmaid MacCulloch – Saint Cross College, Oxford
It was only when looking for an address for Susan Manning in order to present her with a copy of my Gifford Lectures that I discovered the news of her recent death. I write to add my deepest condolences to her family and to the University on the loss of such a gracious and talented scholar, who extended to me the warmest of welcomes during my brief period at the Institute for Advanced Studies.
Frazer McGlinchey – Edinburgh
Susan was as thoughtful and generous with her time as she was an engaging and talented academic.
An enormously positive presence at IASH and STAR from my experience, her legacy will be a fitting tribute. Thoughts with her family and friends for their sad loss.
Robin MacLachlan
On behalf of the James Hogg Society and the Editorial Board of the Stirling/ South Carolina Hogg Edition, I post this in grateful tribute to Susan’s immeasurable contribution to the study of Scottish literature.
Maureen N. McLane – New York University
I write in shock and with great sadness. As so many have attested, Susan was an intellectual dynamo and astonishingly generous; I first met her about 10 years ago at an MLA, where she—not for the first time—turned a dry professional occasion into a conversable, sociable, stimulating party. Susan was a scholar of transatlantic connections (among many other things), and her life was an engine of these connections. She profoundly redirected the course of my and so many others’ work; she was both erudite and original. Sue’s important books, amazing editorial projects, extensive mentorship, and galvanic presence proved that the republic of letters could be a republic of the rigorous mind but also the open heart. She embodied the spirit of enquiry she so brilliantly traced in the 18th and 19th centuries. I will treasure not only her scholarship, her many insights, and her tremendous personal example but also memories of a delightful fish dinner in Haarlem, tea in Cambridge, MA, and convivial beers in Edinburgh pubs. A great loss to me and countless others. All condolences to her family and dearest ones.
Ken McNeil
Susan was an amazing scholar whose work influenced many of us who were interested in Scottish literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
She was also enormously generous in her support and advice. Her work on transatlantic culture has influenced mine enormously, and I was looking forward to talking with her soon on Scottish and transatlantic matters. I will miss her.
Hector MacQueen – University of Edinburgh
I sat on the committees that appointed Susan to her chair and, later, as Director of IASH. It was obvious straightaway that she was a superb and wide-ranging scholar and, in the second appointment, that she not only had a clear vision of what IASH would do under her leadership but also a firm grip on how that would be achieved. What became clear in working with her in various ways was her personal warmth and generosity of spirit. She gave freely of her time and knowledge, to IASH and to importunate colleagues and students. She devised important and interesting projects and drew others into them, always in positive and constructive ways. I don’t think I ever heard her utter a cross word despite what must have been temptation at least some of the time. A huge loss to her family above all, but also to scholarship in the humanities and to her many friends from all over the world, she will be very greatly missed.
Stuart McWilliams – IASH Fellow 2011-12
Such sad and confusing news. Those of us who benefited from Susan’s personal, practical and intellectual generosity will never forget. The lives and careers of hundreds of IASH Fellows turned in her orbit; their new trajectories are also hers.
Judit Majorossy – IASH Fellow 2008
I’m extremely sorry to heard the news. As an IASH fellow I met Susan in 2008. She was the spirit of the small scholarly community from around the world at IASH with her kind, open-minded, humble and wise personality. Rest her in peace and condolences to her family from Hungary.
Donald E. Meek – Professor Emeritus of Scottish and Gaelic Studies, 2002-8
On Monday 22nd, I was informed of the passing of Professor Susan Manning, Grierson Professor of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh.
What a shock! Susan was a wonderful colleague in my latter years at Edinburgh. The word ‘vitality’ sums her up. I was never in her presence – for a chat, in formal committees, in discussions about research – without feeling inspired and grateful.
I felt grateful, and still do, because Susan was so intensely human, a lovely person, fond of family and scholarship. Above all, she had a very warm heart which complemented her extremely sharp brain. Her ability to chair committees, and to understand the intricacies of university politics in ‘knowing’ ways, was outstanding. I wrote various articles for books which she edited, and I enjoyed and benefited from her appreciation of my work.
It can truly be said of Susan that she led by example, setting up projects, editing major books as well as writing them herself, lecturing and teaching superbly, and inspiring others. I will never know how she managed to do so much, and yet to be so natural – and to wear a radiant smile on her face, even when she wasn’t well.
I will miss her greatly, but I will remember her with joy and gratitude.
Silvia Mergenthal – Department of Literature, University of Konstanz, Germany; IASH Fellow 2006
As a former IASH scholar I would like to express my deep sadness at the untimely death of Susan Manning. She was one of those rare scholars who carried her great knowledge and wisdom lightly and modestly, and who used her wonderful wit with kindness. Like everyone else who has ever had the good fortune to spend time at IASH, I have learned from her example, and profited from her help.
John Naylor
I only met Susan once, last summer. She was delightful. She was lively, friendly and bright. She was inspirational. As the new Chair of RSA Scotland, I was looking forward to further contact. Alas this will not be possible. She is a great loss.
Adriana Neagu – Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania; IASH Fellow 2005
I met Professor Manning in the summer of 2005, as an IASH post-doctoral fellow. Before going to IASH, I’d of course known her by fame and read all of her reference works, each and every one of them a landmark in the field. I was much impressed to note that her outstanding scholarship was matched by a formidable warmth and sense of empathy, indeed by a genuine relish in communicating with fellow academics and heartfelt generosity. All exchanges with her were a privilege and an inspiration, and I was personally encouraged by her in the pursuit of a number of projects. The news of her passing deeply saddens me. MAY SHE REST IN PEACE!
Ashton Nichols – Dickinson College, Pennsylvania, USA
When I see the picture of Susan at the top of her Edinburgh homepage, I see the same Susan I first met with Howard when they got off the plane, exhausted, to begin her two-year stay as a Harkness Fellow at the University of Virginia. That was in the late 1970s, early 1980s, and it seems like just a short time ago, even though it was now – literally – a lifetime away. Who will forget Susan’s warmth, her charm, her wit, and perhaps above all, her wide kindness and wide intelligence. What a loss for our academic field and for our at-home families. Susan was that rare combination of a mind that has made a real and lasting contribution to the world of literary scholarship and a heart whose level of influence is only barely indicated by this long, long list of tributes. She was a great person. She will be greatly missed, not only by Howard, and Laura, Lindsay, and Sophie, but by all of those of who were lucky enough to know her along her full, and wonderful, way.
Karen O’Brien – University of Birmingham
Susan’s untimely death is dreadful news. I have known her for twenty years. She took me under her wing when I first arrived in Cambridge as a research fellow. She had held the same fellowship as me in the US a few years before, and this somehow brought me to her attention. Invitations to the Cambridge American literature seminar followed, and then years of mutual conversations about eighteenth-century American literature, of intellectual exchange, support and kindness. I think I visited her office on almost every one of the many trips I made to Edinburgh since she moved there, as well as the Science of Man project, and then during the Hume Tercentary conference last summer. I looked forward to seeing her and can hardly take in the idea that next time she won’t be there. Susan’s breadth of academic interest was of a piece with her capacious generosity, open outlook and unaffected goodwill towards all those who aspired to do something in one of the many fields in which she excelled. And she was such a wonderful example of someone who excelled and yet put family, friends and personal commitments ahead of everything. I am going to miss her.
Jennifer Orr
I did not know Susan well but have always admired her work. I am grateful to her for the help she gave me last year as I formed new research plans. Although she barely knew me and had no obligation to me whatsoever, she was interested in the subject and had no hesitation in giving generously of her time and advice. That is the mark of a true academic and I am very sorry to hear of her passing.
Ann Packard – Elected Member for Scotland, RSA Fellowship Council
The passing of Susan Manning leaves a gap in the RSA which may be hard to fill – and I know many other RSA Fellows share important and meaningful memories of Susan, be these personal or intellectual, or indeed both.
Jan Parker – Arts&Humanities HE
Looking at Susan’s photo it’s impossible to comprehend that someone so vital, so passionately and dispassionately invested in everything and everyone she engaged with, will not always be there for us.
I remember her reading the TLS in funny voices to her non-sleeping infants and her bursting in at midnight after Macbeth, 30 years older but essentially the same. On the 13th Jan 2013 we were planning a futuristic Humanities advocacy platform.
Heartfelt condolences, love and thanks to her family at this devastating time.
Alexandra Parvan – IASH Fellow 2011, 2012
News of her absence, dwam, heartache, sense of her presence.
I was a fellow at IASH both in 2011 and 2012, and because Susan was in charge of the institute I had the wish and feeling that I will be a fellow there again, in 2013, in 2014, in 2015… Such ‘homecoming’ seems now impossible without Susan.
She was such to me that I tried to find her elsewhere in the world. A person who tells you that every idea you came up with is good, and that she will help you bring it to life, enhances your own life to mythical proportions. Susan was ‘the Joy of Yes’, said to the world of thought, experience and perpetual growth. That is why I will continue to look for her in this finite place which she made seem infinite to me.
Jacob Patterson-Stein
Very sad news. The literary and scholarly community will not be the same without Dr. Manning. I was in her transatlanticism MSc, which was a formative experience both academically and personally.
Ruth Perry – IASH Fellow 2008
Susan Manning’s death is a loss to all of us. A brilliant career is truncated, a lively friend missing, a searching interlocutor silenced, a steadily productive writer erased. She always went straight to the nub of an argument; she knew so much; she made connections between people and between ideas with an intellectual humanity that is very rare; she was genuinely interested in everything and had room in her capacious mind for it all. The world is a poorer place without her.
Nicholas Phillipson
It’s going to take a long time to come to terms with Sue’s death – an inexpressibly sad event. Sue, Thomas Ahnert and I directed a research project on the Science of Man in Scotland. It was for her as it was for me one of the most rewarding and fruitful intellectual experiences of our academic careers. It was an interdisciplinary project – Sue coming to it as a literary scholar, Thomas and I as historians, and we each had to come to terms with each others’ disciplines and the ways we each practised it. Our planning sessions were rigorous, often memorable and always fun and they shaped respective outlooks on our great subject, the Scottish Enlightenment. After my retirement, I relied on Sue to keep me up to date with university gossip – and, my goodness, there was always plenty of it; like all born historians, Sue knew that petite histoire matters as much as grande histoire. She is irreplaceable.
Murray Pittock – University of Glasgow
Susan was a person of restless intellectual curiosity and great determination. She never stopped thinking, which is the wellspring of originality. I first met her in 1991 and knew at once that we would stay in touch. As we did: it was a pleasure with a fitting purpose to work with her on the Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature and to meet and talk in IASH and elsewhere. We last spoke after the British Association for Romantic Studies conference at Glasgow in 2011 and planned a meeting. It never happened and never will. Goodbye to a profound, acute, friendly, kind and civil scholar.
John Psarouthakis – Ann Arbor, Michigan
My wife Antigoni and I are very saddened with Susan’s passing.
I was indeed honored to be invited as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at IASH two years ago. I found Susan to be intellectually most engaging without losing her human warmth. I will miss her passionate discussions and strong interest in looking into the development of the University of the future and the costs / economics relating to it and how they would or should be dealt with.
Our thoughts are with her family at this most difficult time.
Jane Rendall – University of York and ECSSS
This is terrible news. I knew Susan through participating in events at IASH and through the Eighteenth Century Scottish Studies Society. She was an immensely impressive scholar and I admired her greatly. She was so incisive, sharp and clever, going to the heart of a problem, and at the same time entirely sympathetic and supportive to all those around her, taking so much time and trouble to assist others. At IASH she created just the right kind of intellectual atmosphere, informal and encouraging yet also challenging. She was an outstanding scholar and human being, and a very great loss to us all. We are privileged to have known her. All my sympathies to her family and friends.
Janet Ritterman – IASH Advisory Board Member
My admiration for Susan was boundless, my sense of loss at her untimely death is no less great. She was a delightful person – a person of great generosity of spirit, whose intellectual strengths were complemented by personal qualities which made her a valued colleague and a trusted friend to so many. I feel deeply for her family, students and immediate colleagues within the University. We will all cherish her memory.
Markku Roinila – University of Helsinki; IASH Fellow 2012
I am very sorry to hear about Susan. I did not get to know her very well in my short time in IASH, but she came across as a very sharp and intellectually vivid person. My condolences to all of you and especially to her family.
Tracey S. Rosenberg
I’m very sorry to hear this. I didn’t know Susan well, but she was the source of one of the most entertaining coincidences of my life.
Several years ago, my uncle, who at the time was a limousine driver in Chicago, picked up a customer at O’Hare airport and drove her to Indiana for a conference. As they chatted during the ride, he discovered that she lived in Edinburgh – and oh, his niece lived in Edinburgh! She was doing a degree in English literature at the university of – you don’t say! Oh, you know Tracey?
Of course, being my uncle, he no doubt spent the rest of the journey telling her embarrassing stories about my childhood; but, being Susan, she never breathed a word about any of them.
Daniel Schulthess – University of Neuchâtel; IASH Fellow 2011
I can hardly believe what happened: the memory of Prof. Manning opening the sessions at IASH and expertly leading the discussions is so lively and fresh that they become present again at this very moment. We shall sorely miss her. I take part in the sadness of relatives, students, colleagues and friends.
Silvia Sebastiani – IASH Fellow 2007, 2010
I’ll never forget the intensity and intelligence of the intellectual exchanges with Susan, her kindness and strength, her courage and sympathy. A generous, profound and passionate scholar, full of ideas, totally engaged in the formation of students and post-docs, as I was in 2007 at the IASH. I owe a lot to her.
I’m sad for this enormous loss, for all the projects I would have loved to discuss together – and for much else besides. But I feel extremely lucky to have had the chance to meet such a marvellous person, and the privilege to work with her for these last 5 years.
My thoughts are with her family and friends.
Daniela Sechel – IASH Fellow 2012
I met Susan in 2005 during my first year of PhD while participating in a conference in Budapest. She spoke about “Historical Characters: Biography, the Science of Man and Romantic Fiction”. I was fascinated by her talk and by the fact she took time to talk to me about Scott’s novel Quentin Durward. During my fellowship at IASH, last year, I had the privilege to know her better. I will never forget her kindness, generosity and witty comments and remarks in all situations. I am very sorry she is no more! It is a great loss! My condolences to her family and friends!
Ong Keng Sen – Artistic Director Theatreworks Singapore
I am very sorry to hear this, rest in peace Susan.
Jo Shaw – University of Edinburgh
As Dean of Research of the College of Humanities and Social Science, I want to express just how much we will miss Susan’s wisdom and humanity in our research community. I have been working with Susan regularly on the development and future of IASH, and it was plain to see from a recent review that we conducted together what an astonishing job she had done, along with her staff, to create such a vital intellectual community (of scholars, fellows and ideas). We will miss her enormously.
Juliet Shields
Susan was a generous mentor to so many scholars, myself included, through IASH, STAR and the ECSSS, among other communities. I feel very lucky to have known her.
Erik Simpson
Susan was an important mentor to me when I was a junior scholar. Her thoughtful encouragement meant a great deal, and her company was always a delight. I will miss her very much.
Jane Slinn
I first met Susan Manning at the Bloomington Eighteenth-Century Studies Workshop in 2005. I was struck immediately by her intellectual generosity, energy and openness. She was particularly supportive and encouraging to junior scholars and graduate students. This is a tragic and untimely loss. My thoughts are with her family and friends at this extremely difficult time.
Janet Sorensen – University of California, Berkeley
Feeling deep sadness at this immense loss. I am forever in her debt for her support and for her contributions to a field of study I hold dear. Donald Meek–quite right. Let us continue to follow her example of humanity and humanities scholarship.
Lada Stevanovic – IASH Fellow 2009
It is so sad to hear that we lost Susan Manning. Several years ago I was a post-doc scholar at IASH and actually I have met Susan just once because at that time she became a grandmother and took a leave. Apart from warm conversation we once had, I enjoyed immensely my time at IASH, a unique institute, filled with inspiration, openness and good communication. Everything in this enjoyable place for research is colored with the atmosphere of giving and exactly generosity is what I immediately relate to Susan Manning. This is a huge loss for everyone who new Susan and especially to her closest family and friends with whom I share my thoughts.
Endre Szécsényi – IASH Fellow 2001, 2008
I’ve just heard the sad news. I’m astonished. I met Susan when I was Mellon Fellow in IASH in 2008. That time she just regained from a long illness and returned to the university. She immediately became the spirit and soul of our small academic community in IASH with her kindness, open-mindedness and scholarship. I wish her family all the best.
Matthew Treherne – Director, Leeds Humanities Research Institute, University of Leeds
On behalf of the Leeds Humanities Research Institute, I would like to record how sorry we are to hear this sad news. Susan was a great advocate for the humanities, and was generous in providing advice and inspiration to us. As Chair of the Consortium of Institutes of Advanced Studies, Susan played a crucial role in supporting the humanities nationally and internationally. She was a wonderful colleague and interlocutor, and we sent our deepest sympathies to her family and friends.
Héliane Ventura. France. IASH Fellow 2010
Susan was an immensely generous scholar whose civilised attention to others and gentle interest in their own research was genuine and unstinting. I am much indebted to her for the time and discussions she granted me to help me reconfigure my work through a transatlantic perspective. She was kind enough to inaugurate a series of conferences on transatlantic narratives for us at the University of Toulouse and we will dedicate all of our future work in the field to the memory of a scholar we sorely miss.
Lena Wånggren – University of Edinburgh
Susan: always an inspiration, always so friendly to myself and everyone around her. She is very much missed.
Tim Watson – University of Miami
When I first heard the terrible news on Thursday, I was stunned; I am still, and I can hardly imagine how her family, friends, and close colleagues are coping with her death. My deepest sympathy and condolences go out to you. Susan was the model of the generous, committed, intellectually rigorous colleague, and she was humble despite her prodigious accomplishments. Long ago, in the mid-1980s, she was my undergraduate teacher, introducing me to Crèvecoeur, Faulkner, and Morrison (among others) when they were writers far outside the canon at Cambridge. We reconnected over the last few years after a workshop in Atlantic Studies at Louisiana State University we both attended: the M.A. program she helped set up at Edinburgh in transatlantic literary studies, the STAR (Scottish Transatlantic Relations) project she oversaw, and the book series in transatlantic studies at Edinburgh University Press she edited are all major achievements in Atlantic Studies and American literary studies. I am so sad I did not have the chance to visit her and the IASH in Edinburgh, a possible visit we had discussed over email. She was clearly beloved at Edinburgh, the steady center of a hundred projects, programs, and people; she was also widely known and universally well-liked and respected in international academic circles. I first found out the news of her death from an email sent to the members of the Society for Early Americanists, where Susan had many friends and collaborators. (The SEA has set up a memorial page for Susan: http://www.societyofearlyameri…
The messages and comments already left on this page at U of Edinburgh are tributes to the broad reach and deep impact that Susan has had on scholars around the world. Thank you for providing this space for us to share our thoughts and memories of her.
Daniel Williams – Swansea University
An immensely generous critic and scholar who will be sorely missed. Sometime in the late 1990s Tony Tanner suggested that I get in touch with Susan, thinking that her comparative work on Scotland and America would be useful in my stuttering attempts at Welsh-American comparisons. He was right, and Susan’s advice, support and encouragement have been greatly valued ever since. A transatlantic pioneer, who played and early and important role in devolving American Studies in Britain. Heddwch i’w llwch.
Olga Wojtas
Dreadfully sad news. I had the privilege of meeting Susan several times when I worked for the Times Higher Education, and was greatly impressed by her learning, her modesty and her kindness. With deepest sympathy to her family, friends and colleagues.
Guangxu Zhao – Shanghai Maritime University; IASH Fellow 2006
I am deeply sorry to hear the bad news about Professor Susan Manning. Although I stayed at IASH not too long in 2006, her enthusiasm, wide range of scholarly interests gave a deep impression. As a visiting research fellow, I was grateful for her support. I will always remember her with fondness and respect.