A Gateway to the Future 2024

Professor, scholar and noted film and literary biographer James Diedrick, ’73, B.A., English, began at Western in the political turmoil of 1969. What helped him—and so many—sift through that tumultuous time was the intellectual rigor and discipline of reading literature.

That same impulse to read, understand, and communicate about thoughts and ideas created a fulfilling career in teaching and publishing. Now an English professor emeritus at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia, Diedrick has published books on Victorian literature, author Martin Amis, and director Stanley Kubrick.

“The Amis book really began at Western,” he says. “Reid Merrill, one of my professors when I was a senior, showed books and movies in the English lounge. He gave me a copy of Amis’ ‘The Rachel Papers’ and said, ‘This is your kind of thing.’”

Years later, when Diedrick visited with Amis at his house in England, he thought of Merrill and the path he took to publishing “Understanding Martin Amis.”

And so it was through planned giving that he is generously giving back to Western, where it all began. He is endowing a scholarship for students in English.

“English is such a flexible discipline. Students can experience joy in discovery and get an education for a career that is meaningful to them. And there are so many careers an English degree serves.”

Diedrick was the first in his family to attend college, and he hopes to support a student who could use the same kind of financial backing he needed to attend Western.

“The reading and writing I was doing as an undergraduate really helped me cultivate my own interior life because literature unleashes our deepest conscious and unconscious thoughts and helps us make sense of the world and our place in it.”