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Gladly Would He Learn, and Gladly Teach
by Alexandra Turner
Kinnamon and a few of the 5 million volumes in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (collage courtesy of PhotoShop)
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English Professor Noel Kinnamon comes from a Carolina farm family with little conventional education, but he spends his vacations in England among books in the libraries of Oxford University. He has won numerous awards and fellowships, and has taught at Mars Hill for 42 years.
"Scholar-teacher is the classic term for the double role I think I really play, partly because my scholarship often relates directly to what I do in the classroom," says Kinnamon. He also likes Chaucer's description of the "Clerk" or "poor scholar" in his Prologue to the Canterbury Tales: "Gladly would he learn and gladly teach."
He still can say, "I enjoy nearly every day I spend teaching in the classroom!"
His commitment is an inspiration to students like Ali Andrzejewski, a Mars Hill College sophomore. "It seems so rare to find people who are still passionate about their everyday work.... especially when they have been teaching for 42 years."
Kinnamon first came to Mars Hill College in 1966. He grew up in a rural tobacco-growing area not far from Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Kinnamon and his older sister were the first people in his family to ever attend college. Their father had to drop out of school in the eighth grade to take care of his family after the death of his father.
The majority of their ancestors were farmers, and the young Noel himself grew up harvesting tobacco, milking cows, and helping with wheat threshing. But he knew farming wasn't for him. An English teacher had introduced him to literature and poetry, and he realized very early that he wanted to be an English professor.
He headed to Duke University, where he completed his undergraduate degree in 1965. He completed his master's degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1966. Ten years later he would return to Chapel Hill to receive his Ph.D. in 1976.
Kinnamon started teaching at Mars Hill College right after receiving his master's degree from UNC. One student mistook him for another student because he was just a few years older than the young people he was teaching.
Kinnamon at Paddington Station in London
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Kinnamon began to travel to England to do scholarly research. He would return about three or four times a year, and the country soon felt "like a second home," he says. He still travels to England at least once a year and spends his time divided between "the exhilarating capital of London" and the much smaller town of Maidstone in the county of Kent.
Kinnamon said he finds neither location to be "really beautiful," but he simply enjoys the area and feels comfortable there. He even prefers to stay in a flat while he visits so he can live like the locals.
While in London, Kinnamon enjoys spending his time attending plays, visiting museums such as the British Museum and the National Gallery, and listening to free Sunday evening organ recitals at St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. Many of his students have received post cards from him while he is in England.
A large amount of his time in England is devoted to studies and working on various scholarly books and articles.
Kinnamon's first book was a collaborative edition of the works of Mary Sidney Herbert,"the most important non-royal woman writer of the English Renaissance," Kinnamon explains.
He is now working on a book that is a collection of letters between people in Mary Herbert's family. He has written and worked on a number of books on Renaissance correspondence, and is currently preparing another book for the Oxford University Press. He does a large amount of his scholarly research at the Bodleian Library, as the central library of Oxford University is called.
He is a "textual scholar," which basically means he edits a lot of work for various encyclopedias and books. Kinnamon has been a Fellow of the Huntington Library in California and is a National Endowment of the Humanities Fellow. He has won other research grants to support his work on scholarly books and articles.
At Mars Hill College he has won three separate teaching awards: The Gibbs Distinguished Teacher Award, the Alumni Teaching Award, and the Continuing Education Program Teaching Award.
Kinnamon has a very strong emotional and intellectual bond with his sister Rebeccah Neff, who is a writer and has a Ph.D in English just like her brother. Kinnamon describes his sister as "a most important influence on my life."
He and his sister have traveled to England and stayed together while doing research. She was just recently commissioned to write the introduction to a collection of short stories by the modernist English writer May Sinclair. Noel Kinnamon and his sister work together and write too: they collaborated on a couple of articles on food and cooking for The Encyclopedia of Appalachia.
"Dr. Kinnamon is a teacher who is not only keenly interested in educating others, but his thirst for education has continued even though he has graduated from college almost half a century ago," says Andrzejewski.
Kinnamon talks about Mars Hill College fondly. "I was happy with my decision from the beginning because I liked the small size of the college, the mainly well-prepared and conscientious student body, and the beautiful setting. I have not regretted my 42 years here."
Members of the Mars Hill College English Department speak fondly of him. Assistant Professor of English Virginia Bower said, "Dr. Kinnamon is, above all, equal mixes of scholar and teacher. He has several publications to his credit, and continues his scholarship every opportunity he gets. He's a savvy traveler, a quality acquired from years of traveling, mostly for scholarly purposes. From what I understand, he has an authentic French pronunciation that has not escaped even the proudest native French speaker!
"Contrary to what his outer appearance might suggest, he loves food, and values especially the finest of ingredients that result in inspired and delicious culinary creations. If he ever retires--and there's no certainty about that possibility--I wouldn't be surprised to find him living abroad, probably in his favorite U.K. town of Maidstone, munching scones while researching, writing, and reminiscing fondly on his days at MHC!"
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