Frank Shuffelton
Frank Shuffelton (died March 4, 2010) was an American scholar of American literature, who taught at the University of Rochester from 1969 to his retirement in 2007. His expertise was the American Enlightenment; he published a monograph on Thomas Hooker and bibliographical books on Thomas Jefferson, whose "Notes on the State of Virginia" he edited. Biography. Shuffelton received an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and did his doctorate at Stanford University. He spent his entire academic career at the University of Rochester, beginning in 1969, teaching American literature of the 17th through 19th centuries. He retired in 2007 , as an emeritus. Shuffelton was chair of Rochester's English Department (2003-2007) and directed its composition program (1997-2000). He was on the editorial boards of "Early American Literature" and "Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture". In 2006, the Modern Language Association honored him as Distinguished Scholar of Early American Literature. His first published book (1977) was on Thomas Hooker (a "perceptive and sympathetic biography", and a "standard study"), the founder of the Connecticut Colony; subsequent book publications were on Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and other transcendentalists. Jefferson was one of his research interests, and besides many articles on  his life and thought, he published two bibliographies of Jefferson, in 1983 and 1992. His intensive study of Jefferson led him to new insights on the material, and made him "an intellectual historian of discourse, gender, and ethnicity". In the 1990s, a series of "landmark articles" made him "a central critical voice in retheorizing early American letters". He was the editor for the Penguin edition of Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia", edited the letters of John and Abigail Adams for Penguin, and edited the "Cambridge Companion to Thomas Jefferson" (2008). He also studied the issue of race  in early American history and literature, and the collection "A Mixed Race: Ethnicity in Early America" (1992), which he edited, is cited by scholars as "excellent". Shuffelton was married to Jane W. Shuffelton, for 46 years, and was survived by her and two children when he died, after a long illness (from cancer) on March 4, 2010, at age 69. An "In Memoriam" published in "Early American Literature" noted his warmth and collegiality, and his support for young scholars getting started in the field.