Mount Saint Mary College Archive
Much has been said of James Finn Cotter, an English scholar and professor, in the last six decades. With this passing earlier this year, we look back on what the Mount legend said in his own words.
On his early days at MSMC
“In the early days, we were really involved in setting up committee work with Dr. Whittaker,” the professor whom Whittaker Hall is named after, said Cotter. “We were hard at work establishing ourselves as a college that was fully committed to our mission of education.”
Of the Newburgh, N.Y. home where he lived for more than 50 years: “I had planned on just renting it,” Cotter explained.
On faith
“Faith has been a great part of my experience here” at the Mount, Cotter once said. “After my father’s death, I started to reexamine my own priorities and religion – that was in 1973 – I started to go to mass here every morning.”
On teaching
“I enjoy teaching very much,” noted Cotter in 2014. “I like the students, and I have a lot who have signed up over the years who are not English majors. They are there because they want to write, and I am here because I want to teach.”
His feelings hadn’t changed upon his retirement in 2020: “Walking into a classroom had been as natural as eating, drinking, and breathing,” Cotter said. “The task is there before us, we are the readers and responders. Without us, there would be no Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Donne, Keats, Hopkins, Dickinson, Frost, or Salinger. We keep them alive by being their audience, supporters, friends, and lovers. Each day is a new day, and each class has new faces and voices that will share their learning.”