Walt Whitman Quarterly Review

Front Matter, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, vol. 35, no. 3/4

Walt Whitman: A Current Bibliography, Summer 2018

Folsom, Ed

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WWQR VOL. 35 NO.2 (FALL 2018)
IN MEMORIAM: DONALD J. KUMMINGS, 1940-2017
Donald J. Kummings was, in the Whitman community, a scholar’s scholar. He was 
responsible for four books that are in a handy place on nearly every Whitman schol-
ar’s bookshelf because they are still consulted (in my case) nearly daily. With J. R. 
McMaster, Don edited Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia (1998), the greatest single 
reference book on Whitman ever compiled. Don coordinated and edited the work of 
over 200 scholars who authored the encyclopedia’s more than 750 articles. He also 
did the hard work of narrowing 5,000 possible topics down to the 750 that finally 
appeared in the book. Earlier, along with Scott Giantvalley, Don pioneered vital 
bibliographical work on Whitman as well. Following Giantvalley’s Walt Whitman, 
1838-1939: A Reference Guide (1981), Don’s massive Walt Whitman, 1940-1975: A 
Reference Guide appeared in 1982, cataloging well over 3,000 books and articles. 
Together, these two volumes provided the first comprehensive annotated list of all 
work about Whitman over nearly a century and a half. They became the basis of the 
continually updated and expanded searchable online bibliography now available on 
the Walt Whitman Archive, just as the articles in the Encyclopedia also have found 
an online life on the Whitman Archive, where users can now consult most entries.
Don also edited two important collections of essays on Whitman. The first, 
Approaches to Teaching Walt Whitman, was one of the earliest and most distin-
guished of the ongoing MLA “Approaches to Teaching” series. It’s safe to say that 
Don’s volume revolutionized the teaching of Whitman, offering a broad range of 
approaches to specific works, from introductory to graduate courses. More recently, 
Don’s A Companion to Walt Whitman, part of the Blackwell Companion series, 
appeared in 2006 and remains a superb gathering of essays on the wide array of 
topics about and critical approaches to Whitman and his work. Exploring cultural 
contexts, literary contexts, and particular poetic and prose texts, the thirty-five 
essays by some of the most distinguished Whitman scholars of our time form a 
kind of monument to the continuing importance of studying Whitman. 
Don received his B.A. in creative writing and an M.A. in English, both at 
Purdue University. He then taught at Adrian College for a couple of years before 
earning a Ph.D. in English and American Studies at Indiana University in 1971. 
He soon became a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, where he 
stayed for thirty-six years, retiring in 2006. During his tenure at Parkside, Don 
earned every teaching award possible (some twice), culminating in the Carnegie 
Foundation Wisconsin Professor of the Year Award in 1997. A poet as well as 
a scholar, Don published a chapbook of his Whitman-inflected poems, called 
The Open Road Trip, in 1989. In 1991, he was the recipient of the University of 
Wisconsin-Parkside Excellence in Research and Creative Activity Award.
Don loved to travel, and he did it often, visiting over fifty countries on five 
continents. He was a man of broad vistas with an admirable eye for detail. His 
work in Whitman studies—energized by that same Whitmanian mix of vista and 
detail—endures, and it has nurtured countless books and articles that continue 
to define the field.


English

IN MEMORIAM: Donald J. Kummings, 1940-2017

Walt Whitman: A Current Bibliography, Winter/Spring 2018

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Back Matter, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, vol. 35, no. 3/4

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