Alice Naomi Benston

1931 - 2021
Alice Naomi Benston, beloved wife of the late George Benston, treasured mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, cherished sister, and adored aunt died peacefully on Friday, January 29 at the age of 89.

.....Dr. Benston retired from Emory University where she was the first full-time Chair of Theater Studies and Film. She was instrumental in forming the Playwriting Center of Theater Emory and Sister City Playwrights, both of which got national recognition. She dramaturged over 30 new plays that went on to full productions at Theaters across the USA and Europe including work by Wole Soyinka, Donzaleigh Abernathy, Elizabeth Wong, and Athol Fugard. She received Emory's Crystal Apple Award for excellence in teaching and mentoring. 

.....Earlier, with two co-deans, she created the Graduate School's Teaching Assistant Training and Teaching Opportunity (TATTO) program   She championed the Beckett Letter Project.

.....A loyal New Yorker during her early and later years, Dr. Benston was educated in NYC public schools, Queens College, and Emory University, earning her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Emory's Institute of Liberal Arts, after which she entered on a distinguished career as a teacher, scholar, senior administrator, and academic leader at Northwestern University (where she was the first female tenured there since 1870), the University of Chicago (where she formed lifelong bonds with some of her students), the Eastman School of Music, the University of Rochester, and Emory University. 

.....At Eastman School of Music, she became the head of the Humanities program, with joint appointments to the Comparative Literature in the university's College of Arts and Sciences.  During her tenure there she reconstructed and revitalized the curriculum to bring more of the Arts and Literature into the lives of those dedicated musicians.  She then chaired Rochester's Department of Languages, Literature and Linguistics.  In that role, she also saved the Women's Study program and created the Susan B Anthony Chair.

.....She was an extraordinarily luminous figure for family, friends, colleagues, and students alike, uplifting their lives with her intellectual vibrancy and creativity, and equally with her graciousness and generosity.  Exceptional as her professional achievements were, her greatest accomplishments could be seen in the innumerable lives she enriched and in the wondrous, inspirational marriage that she enjoyed with George for over half a century.  She will be much missed but always remembered with gratitude and love.