Viktorija Skrupskelytė
Garbės profesorė / Honorary Professor (Suteiktas vardas 2011-06-28)
Viktorija Skrupskelytė, a former professor at the VMU Department of German and French Philology, was awarded the Regalia of Honorary Professor on 14 February 2012, during the celebrations of the University’s 90th anniversary. On the occasion of this anniversary, the long-time VMU teacher shared her thoughts on the University’s first steps in the turbulent days soon after its re-establishment, reviewed the recently made progress and commented on what VMU would need the most in the future.
The professor said she was glad that we mark the University’s anniversary retracing a certain continuity in VMU’s history, opening a dialogue between different generations of alumni, and taking a deeper look at the University’s intellectual traditions. “I greet the occasion as a kind of rehearsal before the centennial: what should we know in 2022 about the old university, its openness to the world in addition to the care for the revived state, and the joy and enthusiasm for science felt by the first students of the University of Lithuania? This is the generation I would like to get closer to. You cannot get the future only from the present, so I think that traditions and a look back are very important,” said the researcher of French and Lithuanian Diaspora poetry, offering to draw experience from the pages of VMU’s honourable history. You can find more of the Professor’s thoughts in her speech delivered during the ceremony for awarding the Regalia of Honorary Professor.
Biography
Prof. Skrupskelytė was born in 1935 in Kaunas. She completed her education at Kaunas Maironis Gymnasium (formerly known as Aušra Girls’ Gymnasium) and emigrated to the USA during the Second World War. In 1955, she graduated from St Joseph’s College, earning a bachelor’s degree in French Language and Literature. She continued her education at the Master’s level at Fordham University, where she defended her thesis titled “La Nouvelle de Prosper Mérimée”. Between 1957 and 1959, she returned to Europe to pursue further studies at the University of Dijon (l‘Université de Dijon) in France. In 1966, she completed her doctoral studies at the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Illinois, earning a Doctor of Humanities degree for her dissertation titled “Duclos as a Moralist”.
Between 1958 and 1966, she worked as a lecturer at St Joseph’s College, the University of Hartford, the University of Illinois, and the University of Chicago. From 1966 to 1982, she was an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago and later at Oberlin College. At the latter, she served as a Professor from 1982 to 1999. In 1999, Skrupskelytė returned to VMU, where she worked as a Professor in the Department of German and French Philology until 2010.
The professor has written dozens of publications on literature and the popularisation of literature. She has also written reviews, translated the poetry of Judita Vaičiūnaitė into English, and compiled the collection “Jonas Aistis: Writings III”.
