Oral Histories

Interview of Franklin P. Rolfe

UCLA professor of English and dean of the UCLA College of Letters and Science.
Subtitle:
Undergraduate Education at UCLA
Series:
Z: Orphan Interviews pre 1999
Topic:
UCLA and University of California History
UCLA Faculty
UCLA Administration
Biographical Note:
UCLA professor of English and dean of the UCLA College of Letters and Science.
Interviewer:
Hodgens, Mark
Interviewee:
Rolfe, Franklin P.
Supporting Documents:
Records relating to the interview are located in the office of the UCLA Library's Center for Oral History Research.
Language:
English
Copyright:
Regents of the University of California, UCLA Library.
Abstract:
Penacook, New Hampshire, boyhood; education at Dartmouth College; effect of training in philosophy on English literature studies; teaching at Stanford University; Harvard University graduate work; studying with George Lyman Kittredge and John Livingston Lowes; doctoral degree, 1931; Sheldon Traveling Fellowship in Europe; instructorship at UCLA, 1932; travel across United States during Depression; influence of wife, Katherine Taylor Rolfe; UCLA English department, 1932; Depression-era salaries; Alfred Edwin Longueil; Ernest Carroll Moore; building UCLA library; Henry E. Huntington and William Andrews Clark memorial libraries; commencement exercises in UCLA Greek Theater; effects of World War II on faculty and students; intellectual level of English department raised by returning GIs; internment of Japanese-American students; anticommunist hysteria, 1930s to 1960s; UCLA's 1930s bad press in Los Angeles Times; Robert Gordon Sproul; Moore's retirement; Hollywood writers guild and Hollywood Quarterly; John Howard Lawson; Kenneth Macgowan; loyalty oath controversy, 1949-50; Committee for Responsible University Government; David S. Saxon; faculty contributions toward salaries of oath nonsigners; Angela Davis affair; curricular reform movements; shift from semester to quarter system; College of Letters and Science structure; Clarence A. Dykstra; Paul A. Dodd; area studies centers at UCLA; relations among University of California campuses; Ronald W. Reagan; Lawrence Clark Powell and Franklin D. Murphy; 1960s student activism.