Rice mourns loss of assistant professor Dietz

Rice mourns loss of assistant professor Dietz

BY LINDSEY FIELDER
Rice News staff

Assistant Professor of English Elizabeth Dietz died April 20 of esophageal cancer. She was 40.

Remembered by her colleagues as a dedicated teacher, Dietz cared about her students and their learning. She taught her undergraduate classes up until two weeks before her death.

Helena Michie, assistant professor of English, met Dietz three years ago at Rice. “[Dietz] was always concerned about her students,” she said. “She was always thinking about her students and their intellectual needs.”

Dietz also served on the graduate committee. Michie said Dietz always treated the students and the curriculum as her top priority. She didn’t let anything else influence her decisions on the committee. “She always had her priorities in order,” Michie said.

With offices across the hall from one another, Michie and Dietz were close friends as well as co-workers. “She was a magical person,” Michie said. “She was smart, funny and she had a special grace about her.”

Dietz joined Rice in 2002 as an assistant professor and taught courses in 16th- and 17th-century nondramatic literature, visual culture, literary theory and Shakespeare.

Humanities dean Gary Wihl said, “The sudden passing of Liz Dietz is a tragic loss for the department and for the school. She demonstrated absolutely remarkable courage and dedication up to the end. I am determined that she will always remain a part of Rice University and always be remembered here. Toward that end, I have established an endowment fund that will be used to create a scholarship or event in her honor and name. We all mourn her loss very deeply and extend condolences to her family.”

Dietz wrote many articles on poetry and visual culture in 16th- and 17th-century England and on 20th-century film adaptations of Shakespeare. She won research fellowships from the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Mellon Foundation. She received both her doctorate in English and master of fine arts degrees in poetry from the University of Iowa.

A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. May 3 in the Rice Chapel. Dietz is survived by her parents, Carol and John Dietz, and two sisters.