Dr. Mathew Ira Winston

1942 - 2020

TUSCALOOSA - Dr. Mathew Ira Winston, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Alabama, died at the age of 77 on February 9, 2020.
He is survived by his wife, Shirley Hunt; his daughters, Susan Robinson and Carla Winston (Evan Brennan); his granddaughter, Caylie Brennan; stepsons, Warren Mark Hunt and Steven Hunt (Tina); his sisters, Marsha Scherer and Ellen Nakash; and his nieces and nephews: Martin and Lynn Scherer, Joshua and Sara Nakash, and Naomi Toledano.
He grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he attended Erasmus Hall High School. He was active in the civil rights movement. During the lunch-counter sit-ins of 1960, he led a picket-line in front of a Woolworth store across from his high school. His commitment to the civil rights movement continued when, in a Woodrow Wilson sponsored program, he spent 1966-67 teaching at Southern University, a historically black university in Baton Rouge, La.
He received his undergraduate degree in English from Cornell University in 1964. On the strength of his academic performance freshman year, he was awarded a scholarship for full tuition and living expenses for the following three years. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude.
He was awarded a doctorate from Harvard University in 1972 for his dissertation on twentieth century comedy. Throughout his academic career he published in this field and that of the English Renaissance.
From 1970 to 1979 he taught at Columbia University. During that time he spent two summers at Cornell, teaching and doing research. For two years, 1975-77, he was a visiting professor at the Freie Universitaet in what was then still West Berlin, Germany.
From 1979 to 1983 he taught at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
In 1983 he came to the Department of English at The University of Alabama, from which he retired in 2009. During his tenure, he led the University of Alabama at Oxford program and served as President of the Faculty Senate.
He was a gentle and loving husband, father, and friend, well-known for his enjoyment of story-telling, wit, and wordplay. A memorial service will be held at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, February 15th at Hotel Capstone.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to Feeding America or the American Civil Liberties Union.