Robert Dombroski

Robert S. Dombroski, Professor of Italian literature, died on May 10, 2002, at the American Hospital in Paris after battling a two-month illness with great strength and tenacity.  He is survived by his wife, Lucy McNeece, Associate Professor of French and Chair of the Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies Program at the University of Connecticut , Storrs , his sons, Ian and Stanley Dombroski, and his grandchildren, Samuel, Lucas and Robert.

Robert Dombroski grew up in Providence , where he was born in 1939. In 1962 he was awarded a BA in Italian at Providence College and pursued graduate studies in both Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley , where he received an MA in 1966, and at Harvard University , where he obtained a PhD in 1969.

Robert Dombroski began his teaching career at the University of Chicago and in 1971 he joined the faculty of the University of Connecticut , Storrs , where he taught Italian and Comparative Literature. He also founded and directed the university's Study Abroad Program in Florence .  In 1994 he was appointed Distinguished Professor of Italian at the College of Staten Island and Director of Italian Studies at the Graduate School of the City University of New York.

Robert Dombroski authored and edited a number of important critical books. Shaped by his unique sensibility to the ways in which the formal properties of literary texts translate and record the flux of historical experience, these include Critical Perspectives on Decameron (1977), La totalità dell'artificio: ideologia e forma nel romanzo di Pirandello (1978), Apologia del vero: letture e interpretazioni dei "Promessi sposi" (1984), L'esistenza ubbidiente: letterati italiani sotto il fascismo (1984), Antonio Gramsci (1989), Properties of Writing: Ideological Discourse in Modern Italian Fiction (1994), and Italy : Fiction, Theatre, Poetry, Film since 1950 (2000).  Yet, it is perhaps in his groundbreaking studies on C.E. Gadda that Robert Dombroski's remarkable accomplishments in the field of modern Italian literature are most apparent.  To the work of Gadda, who remained a constant in Robert Dombroski's life, he dedicated numerous essays, two monographic studies, Introduzione allo studio di C.E. Gadda (1974) and Creative Entanglements: Gadda and the Baroque (1999), and a co-edited volume, Carlo Emilio Gadda: Contemporary Perspectives (1997).

The exceptional quality of Robert Dombroski's scholarship was recognized internationally. He was the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the Modern Language Association Howard R. Marraro and the Aldo and Jean Scaglione Prizes.  Earlier this year he was named honorary President of the American Association of Italian Studies.  But Robert Dombroski's life is distinguished not only by its academic excellence but also by his gift for teaching, his proverbial dedication and support for his students and colleagues, and his unbounded loyalty and generosity towards his friends. He has left a lasting impression on many, many lives and is memory will be cherished by all of us who have known and loved him.

Norma Bouchard, The University of Connecticut , Storrs