Arthur Orcutt Lewis Jr., 88, died on July 18, 2009, in State College. He was born on October 8, 1920, in Wellsville, Pennsylvania, to Arthur Orcutt Lewis, Sr. and Janet Sanderson Lewis who preceded him in death. On March 1, 1945, he married Celeste Ccile Juneau, who survives.
From 1942 to 1946 he served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps as a personnel staff officer, classification and assignment specialist, personal affairs officer, and training officer, earning him the rank of first lieutenant.
He earned A. B. (cum laude) and A. M. degrees in English from Harvard University in 1940 and 1942, and his Ph.D. in English from the Pennsylvania State University in 1951. He retired from Penn State on January 1, 1985, with the rank of associate dean emeritus of the College of the Liberal Arts and professor emeritus of English after 36 years at the university.
He went to Penn State in 1948 as a graduate assistant in English literature and joined the faculty in 1950. After serving as assistant to the head of the English department and chair of English graduate studies, he was promoted to professor in 1960. From 1960 to 65 he was associate head of the Department of English. He served on a wide variety of committees and held many administrative appointments in the College of the Liberal Arts, including associate dean for resident instruction, acting dean, acting head of the Department of English, director of the comparative literature program, and chair of the university's Science, Technology and Society Program and Bachelor of Philosophy Program. He was for many years a member of the University Faculty Senate and its chair in 1969-1970. He was elected to the first board of directors of the Liberal Arts Alumni Society and was on the first board of directors of the University Faculty Club. Outside of Penn State, he was president (1956-1958) and vice president (1952-56, '58-60) of the Pennsylvania Federation of Teachers, and the president of the Science Fiction Research Association in 1977-78.
His research interests and many publications focused on utopian literature, including Of Men and Machines (New York: Dutton, 1963). He edited American Utopias: Selected Short Fiction, as well as a 41-volume utopian literature reprint series, both published by Arno Press/New York Times in 1971. His other books include The Case for Poetry: A New Anthology (with Frederick L. Gwynn and Ralph W. Condee); 4 volumes of Anglo-German and American-German Crosscurrents (with Philip Allison Shelley and LaMarr Kopp); Visions and Revisions in Modern American Literary Criticism (with Bernard S. Oldsey); The World of Japanese Fiction (with Yoshinobu Hakutani); and two volumes of Utopia e Modernit (with Giuseppa Saccaro Del Buffa).
His publication in 1976 of A Directory of Utopian Scholars led to the founding of the national Society for Utopian Studies. He was its chairman in 1979-80 and '82-84. The Society established the Arthur O. Lewis Award in his honor in 1984 to recognize the best annual paper presented at its convention. In 2003 the Special Collections Library at the Pennsylvania State University Libraries named its collection of utopian literature the Arthur O. Lewis Utopia Collection in honor of his many contributions to Penn State's collection and to the field of utopian studies. His scholarly interests also included emblem books. His 1955 Ph.D. dissertation on Shakespeare and the emblem writers led to the growth of the Special Collections Library's emblem book collection.
He is survived by his wife, Celeste J. Lewis, of State College; his sister Janet Grove, his brothers Edward Lewis and James Lewis and by his three children; Beca Lewis and her husband Delbert Lee Piper Sr., Arthur Orcutt Lewis, III, and Jamie Lewis and her husband Keith Lykens,. He is also survived by his five grandchildren Charles Wareham, Christin Von Musser, Lara Lewis, Arthur Orcutt Lewis IV and Maricie Lewis and his four great grandchildren Madison Flaherty, Montana Von Musser, Cassidy Von Musser, and Logan Wareham.
Arrangements are being made by the Mark D. Heintzelman Funeral Home, State College. There will be no services held as requested. On October 10, 2009 a memorial service will be held to honor his work as a scholar and teacher. More information will be available on this service at a later date.
Memorial contributions may be made to the Pennsylvania State University to support the Arthur O. Lewis and Celeste J. Lewis Utopia Collection Endowment, Office of Development, 510 Paterno Library, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802.