Richard A. Macksey is Professor of Humanities and Co-founder and longtime Director of the Humanities Center at The Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University

The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...

, where he has taught critical theory, comparative literature, and film studies. Professor Macksey was educated at Johns Hopkins, earning his B.A. in 1953 and his Ph.D. in 1957. 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

MLN

Modern Language Notes is an academic journal established in 1886 at the Johns Hopkins University, where it is still edited and published, with the intention of introducing continental European literary criticism into American scholarship. Each year, one issue is devoted to each of the four...

 (Modern Language Notes), published by Johns Hopkins University Press

Johns Hopkins University Press

The Johns Hopkins University Press is the publishing division of the Johns Hopkins University. It was founded in 1878 and holds the distinction of being the oldest continuously running university press in the United States. The Press publishes books, journals, and electronic databases...

. He is a recipient of the Hopkins Distinguished Alumnus Award. Dr. Macksey also presides over one of the largest private libraries in Maryland, with over 70,000 books and manuscripts.

As Director for the Humanities Center, Macksey, with funding from the Ford Foundation

Ford Foundation

The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....

, organized the influential international literary theory symposium, "The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man," which featured prominent post-structuralists Paul de Man

Paul de Man

Paul de Man was a Belgian-born deconstructionist literary critic and theorist.He began teaching at Bard College. Later, he completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in the late 1950s...

, Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...

, Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes

Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...

, Jacques Lacan

Jacques Lacan

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...

, and where Derrida presented his theories in the lecture "Structure Sign, and Play in the Human Sciences"

In 1999 the Richard A. Macksey Professorship for Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities was established by a former student Edward T. Dangel III and his wife, Bonni Widdoes. The professorship is currently held by Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott is Johns Hopkins University's Richard A. Macksey Professor of the Humanities. Born in Brooklyn, New York, McDermott attended St...

.

Professor Macksey is well known among Johns Hopkins students for his teaching. Many undergraduate students regard his course on Proust to be a highlight of their college experience; likewise, the attendees of his evening seminars for graduate students, held in the elegant surroundings of his home, count their experiences as among the most significant of their development as scholars. Age has not slowed down Professor Macksey in the least. According to the Johns Hopkins Integrated Student Information System, consulted on 11 May 2011, Dr. Macksey will be teaching "The Rhetoric of Fiction," an advanced undergraduate seminar.

Other notable students of Richard Macksey include Susan Stewart, Caleb Deschanel

Caleb Deschanel

Joseph Caleb Deschanel, A.S.C. is an American film cinematographer and film/television director.-Early life:Deschanel was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a French father and an American mother, who raised him in her Quaker religion. He went to Severn School for high school...

, Walter Murch

Walter Murch

Walter Scott Murch is an American film editor and sound designer.-Early life:Murch was born in New York City, New York, the son of Katharine and Canadian-born Walter Tandy Murch , a painter. He went to The Collegiate School, a private preparatory school in Manhattan, from 1949 to 1961...

, Matthew Robbins

Matthew Robbins (screenwriter)

Matthew Robbins is an American screenwriter, film producer and director. He is good friends with Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Guillermo Del Toro and Walter Murch and has had cameo appearances in THX 1138 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind...

, and Frank Moorer.

Publications

The Structuralist Controversy: The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man. JHU Press 1970.

Velocities of Change: Critical Essays from MLN (Modern Language Notes) JHU Press 1974.

The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism. (Forward) 2nd Edition. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.