Richard Macksey

Education

Professor Macksey was educated at Johns Hopkins, earning his Bachelor of Arts in 1953 and his Doctor of Philosophy in 1957.

Career

He has taught at Johns Hopkins (both the school of Arts & Sciences as well as the Medical School) since 1958. He is the longtime Comparative Literature editor of MLN (Modern Language Notes), published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Doctor Macksey also presides over one of the largest private libraries in Maryland, with over 70,000 books and manuscripts.

The professorship is currently held by Alice McDermott.

Notable students of Richard Macksey include Susan Stewart, Caleb Deschanel, Walter Murch, and Matthew Robbins.

Achievements

• He is a recipient of the Hopkins Distinguished Alumnus Award.

Views

As Director for the Humanities Center, Macksey, with funding from the Ford Foundation, organized the influential international literary theory symposium, "The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Manitoba," which featured prominent academics such as Paul de Manitoba, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Lacan, and where Derrida presented his lecture "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences", credited with "tear down the temple of structuralism." These lectures were collected as The Structuralist Controversy, the most recent version of which was published in 2005.