Derek Maus

I, Derek C. Maus, died in Potsdam, New York on September 17th, 2025, of complications related to the aggressive multiple myeloma with which I was first diagnosed in the spring of 2023. I had some practice writing obituaries for parents, colleagues, and dear friends before I myself departed this world, so I thought I would take a shot at writing my own (though there's something about writing it in the third-person that feels too strange, so I will just do it in my own written voice).

I was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas on November 20, 1971, to Warren and Anneliese Maus. Within the first couple of years of my life, we moved first to Kansas City, Missouri and then to Germany (at the time, West Germany), where most of my maternal family still resided. I grew up bilingual there until we moved back to the United States in early 1978. My parents divorced and eventually settled, respectively, in Little Rock, Arkansas and Kansas City, between which I would divide my time until graduating from the historic and notorious Little Rock Central High School in 1990.

I spent my first year of college at Boston University but returned to Fayetteville to complete my undergraduate studies in English, History, and Russian at the University of Arkansas with some of the most amazing teachers and mentors that an eager young student could ever have hoped for. Seriously, y'all…it's not the reputation or the price of the institution that matters, it's how much the people who work and study there care about teaching and learning. Anyway, on with the story…

After a year and a half of waiting tables, playing music, and saving up some money, I turned back to the life of the mind full-time and moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1995 to start graduate school in English and Russian literature at the University of North Carolina. I had written an undergraduate honors thesis about humanistic satire during the Cold War and my intention was to continue that work at UNC. Again, I was fortunate to have some of the most caring and talented mentors possible in supporting those efforts and I graduated with my MA in 1997 and my PhD in 2001. I was lucky enough to also defy the odds of a terrible job market and land my first (and only) academic position at SUNY Potsdam the same year I finished my dissertation.

I was twenty-nine years old, was carrying a comparatively minimal amount of debt from my ten years of studies, and could even afford the mortgage payment on a slightly ragged but comfortable house in the village of Potsdam on what in hindsight was an astonishingly meager starting salary. Life was not perfect – not that it really ever is – but it was generally good.

The next decade presented me with a lot of personal and professional challenges, whether those involved learning how to become a better teacher, scholar, and colleague, or navigating the complexities of social life in a small town. Though neither was easy, the latter often proved harder than the former. I made a lot of good friends during this time, but I lost a lot of them for various reasons too. I got to work with a lot of amazing students and got to teach a lot of courses (and I mean a LOT of courses…) that gave me the chance to engage with a host of amazing writers and their works. One of my favorite things to do in my courses was to include a book on the syllabus that I'd never read before so that the students and I could go through the experience of reacting to it for the first time together.

If I'm being honest, though, there was a lot of tough sledding during those early years in Potsdam and I was pretty burnt-out by the time I went on my first sabbatical in 2009. Fortunately, I was offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in the spring of 2010 that restored the joy in my life in profound and lasting ways. I was honored to receive a Fulbright Award to teach three courses at Karl-Franzens Universität in the beautiful city of Graz, Austria. In the slightly less than five months I was there, I was not only able to find new and invigorating avenues for exploring the scholarly subjects most important to me, but also to establish countless relationships that continued to bear fruit in unexpected and fulfilling ways until the end of my days.

The decade that followed my return from Austria featured innumerable sources of happiness, many of which I'm not even sure I could have imagined beforehand. In my professional life, I started developing a reputation as a reliable scholar, particularly in relation to the subject of satire. Somehow, instead of me having to reach out to academic journals and presses to see if they might be interested in publishing what I was writing, they started reaching out to me, a humbling and gratifying gesture of respect that I sincerely hope I paid back.

The best part was that I got to collaborate on scholarly work with several wonderful colleagues. I always preferred working together to working alone, mostly because it vastly increased the opportunities for talking at length about literature, the subject that remained integral to my entire sense of self for over forty years. For better or worse, storytelling is what I lived for and the diminishing understanding of its value is in my view one of the telling tragedies of our age. If you want to see the tangible product of this lifelong vocation, my CV is easy enough to find on the Internet. The intangible product is the person that I became in my fifty-three years on earth.

Despite achieving some measure of success in the profession, it wasn't my job that brought me the highest points of this last long chapter. Late in 2012, I met the love of my life, Stephanie Tritt, with whom I thereafter shared a life that circumstances necessitated dividing between Potsdam and Montréal. Doing so meant a lot of driving back and forth, but it also gave us access the best that both a glorious city and a village on the edge of the relative wilderness could provide. Stephanie offered me her love in ways I didn't at first feel worthy of, but over time I came to recognize the vitality of what we had together and she kept me going during the absolute darkest days of my struggles with cancer, as well as during innumerable stretches of far-happier times.

For a while, it seemed like the spectacular three-dog, two-cat menagerie we cobbled together from among the furry companions we brought into the relationship might be the extent of our family, but the arrival of our son, Oscar Tritt Maus, in May of 2018 changed that in the most amazing way possible. Helping to bring him into the world and raising him to be a kind, bright, and loving human being is and will always be the best thing I ever did with my limited time on earth. Nothing else even comes close.

We rode out the COVID-19 pandemic together as a young family, enjoyed the Canadiens' unlikely run to the 2021 Stanley Cup Finals together under curfew in Montréal, and simultaneously juggled Oscar's first few years of school and my post-diagnosis treatment schedule. There are so many ways in which I wouldn't wish what I went through between my long illness and my death on anyone, but the love of my wife and my son – along with that of other friends, family members, and health-care workers – not only kept me going, but created a lot of joy where you might not expect to find it.

Although I can't honestly say I left this life at peace with how soon it ended, I am grateful that I was for the most part a very fortunate person while alive. I had friendships that lasted decades and I felt love of sorts that I would wish for everyone. I obviously don't have any more chances to directly influence the world around me, but my lasting hope for every community from the smallest town to the entirety of humanity that we find our way back to a sense of shared responsibility that seems to have been forgotten, ignored, or devalued. I am survived by everyone and everything, not because I was uniquely important but because we truly are all in this together.

A celebration of life will take place at some point down the road, but please respect my family's privacy and do not inquire about it. Also, I would prefer if in lieu of flowers or charitable donations or any other material gesture that anyone wishing to offer something in my memory simply perform some act of kindness that they might otherwise not have.

Farewell and here's hoping that better days are ahead for everyone.