Jean M. D'Amato-Thomas
1945-2010
Jean M. D'Amato-Thomas was born on July 20, 1945, in Boston. She received a B.A. form Tufts in 1967, and M.A. from Middlebury in 1969, and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1978. Earlyin her career she taught at Williams, Tufts, Brandeis, and the University of Pittsburgh. From 1988 to her death she was professor of Classics at the Louisiana Scholars' College at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. She received a Mildred Hart Bailey Award for research at Northwestern and recently an American Philosophical Association grant to study ancient works in southwest Italy. She had long experience as with the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies at Stanford and as a Program Officer at the NEH. Jean was noted primarily as a tireless teacher who won an award for teaching at the University of Southern California and who cheerfully led packs of enthusiastic students across the historic sites of Italy, but not to the exclusion of post-classical Italian culture. She had a keen interest in operas drawn from ancient history or mythology, and an evening at the opera was the highlight of every trip. Her husband, Fleming Thomas, predeceased her. Jean died following a brief illness on March 9, 2010, in Natchitoches.
— Ward Briggs