All Scholars

William McCulloh majored in Music, German, and English at Ohio Wesleyan. His classical education had been limited to two years of high-school Latin, one year of college Latin and three years of college Greek. He chose to spend his Rhodes Scholarship at Merton College for three reasons: 1) its antiquity; 2) T.S. Eliot had been there; 3) an expansive meadow lay beside it. A small-town boy from the Midwest, he was overwhelmed by Oxford and the preparation of his fellow students. He took philosophy tutorials from W.H. Walsh (1913-86), best known for his An Introduction to the Philosophy of History(1951), and the metaphysician Anthony Quinton (1925-2010). His ancient history tutors were A.R.W. Harrison (1900-69), a specialist in ancient law, and Roman historian C.E. Stevens (1905-76), tutor at Magdalen, who famously took on a teaching schedule of 72 hours per week.  McCulloh received a second in lit. hum. And the B.A. in 1956. 

        McCulloh settled in at Kenyon after completing his doctorate Like his tutor Stevens, McCulloh devoted himself to teaching that it left little time for scholarship.  He was duly recognized by the APA in 1985 with a citation that read in part, “His notable range of interests, from Russian to modern English literature and film, from classical music to theology, have frequently drawn him into ‘quiet collaboration and cross-disciplinary projects’…In addition to his regular heavy course load, he schedules tutorials in Sanskrit, Modern Greek, or Italian…What particularly attracts students as well is McCulloh’s style as teacher and mentor, He is witty, intellectually passionate, and challenging, drawing students into the moral, historical, and political dimensions of classical culture on the one hand, or making them look with fresh vision or grammatical and methodological problems on the other.” At his retirement, the faculty citation stated that his “career had launched a thousand dreams of inspiration and courage.”