Daniel John DeWispelare II

Daniel John DeWispelare II, a much beloved family member, friend, teacher, and scholar, died on January 26th, 2024. Daniel will be forever missed by those who knew and loved him. He was born on July 15, 1983 and grew up in Lakewood, Colorado, an area for which he retained strong affection. After graduating from Bear Creek High School, he won a Boettcher scholarship to attend the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he participated in the Presidential Leadership program and graduated summa cum laude with a BA in English and History in 2005. He earned an MA (2007) and PhD (2011) in Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania and went on to a distinguished academic career, first teaching for a year at Bilkent University in Ankara and then for twelve years in the English Department at the George Washington University in Washington, DC, where he was promoted with tenure to Associate Professor in 2018.



Daniel was a collector of many things, among them books, maps, languages, and friends. He skateboarded and played ice hockey during his younger years, and continued to enjoy skating and hockey, especially the Caps. Although he left Colorado after his BA, Daniel remained closely tied to the state, to his family, and to the friends he made there during the first part of his life. He worked hard to keep his friends close despite geographical distances, and he was widely seen by those who knew him as a deeply kind, humble, and empathetic person. With friends and strangers alike, Daniel was incredibly generous and thoughtful. In conversation, he had the ability to truly see others, to engage and draw them out. Despite his wide knowledge, he never seized the floor or held forth, but any dinner, conference, or event was richer for his presence. This same quality made him such a remarkable teacher, one able to foster natural and invigorating discussions among his students at all levels. He excelled in the classroom and was greatly admired by his undergraduate and graduate students alike. His courses at GWU included Introduction to Literary and Critical Theory; surveys of British literature; History of the English Language; The Nineteenth Century: Slavery, Abolition, and the Present; and the British Romantic Period: Rights and Revolution. He was passionate about developing students' writing skills and was a careful advisor of numerous theses and dissertations.



Daniel was a phenomenal scholar and published an impressive number of articles in journals such as The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation; Studies in Romanticism; Eighteenth-Century Fiction; Journal of British Studies; and Nineteenth Century Studies. His highly respected monograph, Multilingual Subjects: On Standard English, Its Speakers, and Others in the Long Eighteenth Century, was published in 2017 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. Unlike most first monographs, his was not a revised dissertation, but a fully new project. His scholarly work centered on questions of language and translation - not in the abstract, but as part of the lived world, enmeshed in aesthetics, politics, and personal experiences. The very format of his monograph emphasizes this; in between rich and theoretically sophisticated chapters on eighteenth-century English standardization and dialects are interchapters on 'multilingual lives" which illustrate his attunement to individuals who shaped and were shaped by the English language. In more recent years, his teaching and scholarship turned towards the concept of rioting as both literary and political form, an interest which preceded but was increasingly informed by the ongoing events of the past decade.



Travel was one of Daniel's greatest passions. He spent time studying language and literature across the globe, including stints in Quebec, Hong Kong, Prague, Geneva, Dublin, Macao, the Hague, London, and Jakarta. His time in Turkiye and many other Muslim countries left him with great respect for Islam and the Quran, both of which he increasingly turned to for peace and inspiration when times got difficult. On one of his final trips, Daniel fulfilled a long-held dream to visit the birthplace of Islam in Saudi Arabia. Whether at home in DC or abroad, Daniel was perpetually enthusiastic about visiting new places and delighted in exploring both cities and the countryside. But he always felt most at home in the mountains, familiar to him from his native Colorado.



Daniel was always close to his family in Colorado, Nebraska, and Texas. He is survived by:

Kathryn DeWispelare, Centennial CO (mother)

Amy Yaft, Aurora, CO (sister)

Katherine Wasdin, Washington, DC (girlfriend)

Shirlee Vakoc, (great aunt), Omaha, NE

Steven Hecke (uncle) & his wife, Christine, Denton,TX

Philip Pearson (uncle), Sutherland, NE

Eva Kadavy, (aunt), Fremont, NE

Edward DeWispelare (uncle) & his wife, Kimberly, Valley, NE

He is also survived by two nephews, Joshua & Jonah Yaft, and a niece, Grace Yaft, of Aurora, CO in addition to five cousins and their families. He was preceded in death by his father, grandparents and an aunt.

Donations can be made in Daniel's name to Miriam's Kitchen, 2401 Virginia Avenue, NW; Washington, DC 20037.