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Established in 1877 on Jefferson Avenue in downtown Detroit, the University of Detroit added the campus on West McNichols in 1927. In 1990, the University merged with Detroit’s Mercy College, founded in 1941 on Southfield Road at Outer Drive.

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Creative Writers at the UDM McNichols Campus.

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Joyce Carol Oates taught on the McNichols campus from 1962 until 1967; John Gardner was Distinguished Visiting Professor in 1970-71; Daniel Berrigan was a visiting lecturer in 1975. Dudley Randall held a combined post as a reference librarian and poet-in-residence from 1969 until 1975, and, from 1969 until 1976, poet Joan Gartland also worked in the library’s reference department; novelist Hugh Culik taught at the campus from 1989 until 2002, and novelist Timothy Dugdale and memoirist Tom Stanton have taught there since 2000 and 2008 respectively. In 2001, Albert Michael Ward and Aneb Kgositsile (Gloria House) were appointed writers in residence at the University’s Dudley Randall Center for Print Culture.  Among published creative writers who hold degrees from this campus are Elmore (“Dutch”) Leonard (Ph.B.,1950), Mary Minock (BA, 1966), Donald Levin (MA 1974), Ursula Carlson (Ph.D., 1976), Gary Eberle (BA, 1973 and MA, 1976), and Michael Martin (M.A. 2000). William Kienzle attended the University in 1968.

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The McNichols Campus in Literature

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Oates, who shared an office in the Jane and Walter Briggs Liberal Arts Building and taught classes

there and in the Commerce and Finance Building, makes the most explicit use of the campus in

her work. Two works involve relationships between professors and difficult students. “In the

Region of Ice” is a story based upon Oates’s experience with an actual student, Richard

Wishnetsky, an extremely troubled young man, who murdered the well-known and much

respected rabbi, Morris Adler, before committing suicide in front of the congregation assembled

at Shaarey Zedeck synagogue in 1966. In the story, the Wishnetsky character becomes Allen

Weinstein, a very intelligent but mentally ill young man who attempts to befriend an English

professor, a nun named Sister Irene, whom Greg Johnson says was suggested by a faculty colleague,

Sister Bonaventure, but most closely resembles Oates (126).  In them, the professor is the narrator,

identified as Oates herself, and the novel’s pretext is a series of letters she receives from the student,

Maureen Wendall, who has flunked out of the University. From these letters, the Oates of the novel

constructs the four-decade narrative of the Wendall family.

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Other UDM Literary Notes

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• On November 14, 1962, eighty-eight year-old Robert Frost drew an audience of 8,500 to the Memorial Building (now Calihan Hall).

• The University’s Theatre has been located in several buildings on the McNichols campus, beginning with a sixty-seat room in the basement of the Chemistry Building, the first floor of the Commerce and Finance Building, the Florence Ryan Auditorium, and the third floor of the Library (Muller 221-2). After moving to Marygrove College’s Theatre in the 1970s, the University’s Theatre company re-established itself in the Studio Theatre (later re-named the Earl D. A. Smith Theatre) in Architecture Building in 1984. After the merger with Mercy College, the Theatre has found a home for a time in McAuley Auditorium on the Outer Drive campus (Peller). Today, the Theatre Company performs at the Marlene Boll Theatre, 1401 Broadway Street in Downtown Detroit.

• Student literary publications include the campus newspaper, The Varsity News, The Varsity News Magazine (1924-1928), Fresco (1950-1961), and The Campus Detroiter (Muller 368), and the Howling Wolf chapbooks.

• Oates told a 2001 Marygrove College audience that she got the idea for her well-known short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” from a Life Magazine article she read in a restaurant on Livernois across the street from the McNichols campus.

• English Professor James Callow established the world’s first computerized folklore archive at the McNichols campus.

• The campus is the home of the Dudley Randall Center for Print Culture, founded by Professor Hugh Culik and now directed by Professor Rosemary Weatherston.  At the center, students and faculty collaborate on publications like the Howling Wolf chapbooks and the academic journal, Post-Identity. The center also sponsors writers in residence and public readings and lectures.

• The cover photo for Gary Eberle’s volume of short-stories, A City Full of Rain, was taken outside his Briggs Liberal Arts Building office around 1977.

 

Works Cited

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Eberle, Gary. A City Full of Rain: Collected Stories. Xlibris, 2001.

Johnson Greg. Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates. Plume, 1998.

Muller, Herman J., S.J. The University of Detroit: A Centennial History. The University of Detroit, 1976.

Oates, Joyce Carol. them. Ballantine, 1969.

---. “In the Region of Ice.” “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”: Selected Early Stories.  Ontario Review Press, 1993.

Peller, Laurie. "Taking A Bow" [History of the Theatre Company]. Spiritus [UDM alumni magazine], Fall 1995.

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Frank D. Rashid, professor emeritus of English at Marygrove College, received his BA and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Detroit.

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Photos by Anna Fedor (2003)

First posted 2004, updated January 2020

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