Bowie, Malcolm 1943-2007 (Malcolm McNaughtan Bowie)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born May 5, 1943, in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, England; died of multiple myeloma, January 28, 2007. Educator and author. Bowie was a former master of Christ's College, Cambridge, who was highly regarded as an expert on Marcel Proust. His educational background included master's degrees from the University of Edinburgh, Cambridge University, and Oxford University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex, earned in 1970. Beginning his academic career at the University of East Anglia, he was an assistant lecturer in French there in the late 1960s. He moved on to teach at Cambridge, where he was a fellow of Clare College and tutor and director of studies in modern languages until 1976. Next, Bowie joined the University of London as a professor of French and head of the department at Queen Mary College until 1989. From 1989 to 1992, he was founding director of the university's Institute of Romance Studies, and honorary research fellow in 1993. Moving on to Oxford, he was Marshal Foch professor of French literature and fellow at All Souls College from 1992 to 2002, and director of the European Humanities Research Centre from 1998 to 2002. The last part of his career was spent as master of Christ's College, Cambridge, a post from which he resigned in 2006 as he grew ill from cancer. An energetic scholar and leader in his field, Bowie was president of the Association of University Professors of French from 1982 to 1984, of the Society of French Studies from 1994 to 1996, and of the British Comparative Literature Association, beginning in 1998. Elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1993, he also served as general editor of the Society of French Studies' journal from 1980 to 1987 and worked in this capacity, as well, for the Cambridge "Studies in French" series, which he helped launch. An accomplished author of scholarly works, Bowie was noted for his texts on such French authors as Marcel Proust and Stephane Mallarmé, including Mallarmé and the Art of Being Difficult (1978) and Proust among the Stars (1998). Bowie had a strong interest in psychology and psychoanalysis, which led to such writings as Freud, Proust, and Lacan: Theory as Fiction (1987) and Psychoanalysis and the Future of Theory (1994).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), February 6, 2007, p. 47.