Eugene and Millicent Bell’s Gift Establishes Fellowship for English Students

    Doctoral and post-doctoral students in the Department of English have received a boost with the establishment of the Millicent Bell Fellowship in Literature, the result of a generous gift from alumni Eugene and Millicent Bell. 

      The fellowship is named for an eminent scholar and recipient of many honors, including a Howard Foundation Fellowship, the Shell Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Winship Prize for biography. Millicent’s book, Marquand: An American Life, was nominated for the National Book Award in biography and for the Pulitzer Prize. Among the hundreds of other books, articles, and essays that Millicent has authored are Hawthorne’s View of the Artist, Shakespeare’s Tragic Skepticism, and Meaning in Henry James, a book now considered the standard for studying the great novelist.

      An English major at Washington Square College, Millicent was first published in the WSC Review, the student literary magazine at the time. She and her husband, Eugene, met while students at NYU. “Gene was in a couple of classes of mine,” remembers Millicent. “But being shy young people, we didn’t formally meet until friends introduced us. He sat behind me in a ‘Philosophy of the Renaissance’ course taught by James Burnham, and as we got to know each other he would borrow my notes whenever he had missed a class.”

      “The Bells’ gift is all the more meaningful to the department and to our students because of their touching story of lifelong devotion to learning and to each other,” says John Guillory, Silver Professor of English and former chair of the English department. “My colleagues and I are very grateful for their support.”

      Eugene Bell, who passed away last summer at the age of 88, established the fellowship at NYU because, as he wrote, “It is fitting that Millicent’s achievement be broadcast by our alma mater.” Eugene Bell was an accomplished professional in his own right. Often referred to as the “Father of Tissue Engineering,” he pioneered the development of replacement parts for the human body damaged by aging, disease, accident, or genetic destiny, creating biologic human tissues for surgical grafts.

                “My professional life has been connected with literary research and Gene’s life was marked not only by his scientific research, but also by his interest in everything from literature to art to science,” says Millicent. “We lived in New England for most of our years after college, but always loved New York, where we had both been born, and remembered tenderly those early days at NYU.”