Living on Mars. A society struggling to survive a world-ending climate catastrophe. The United States at war with itself.
Years of studying literature, sciences, and geopolitics led Professor Emeritus Frederick Turner to publish these imagined outcomes as science fiction epics.
After publishing nearly 50 books, teaching for almost six decades, and venturing into various areas of study for a lifetime, Turner champions the humanities as the greatest pillar of knowledge and research.
“In the traditional university, the school of arts and humanities is the core of the university,” Turner said. “That is the place where all the various lines of research and activity are understood together in relation to each other.”
In 1985, the late Robert W. Corrigan, dean of the School of Arts and Humanities (A&H) at the University of Texas at Dallas, hired Turner. A&H – founded in 1975 – was in its 10th year when Turner joined UTD as Founders professor of literature and creative writing. He taught courses on English literature, including Shakespeare and Renaissance studies and performance studies.
“There was a lot of good interdisciplinary conversation, and people in different schools talked with each other quite a lot,” he said. “Since it was a smaller school then, you could get to know plenty of people in different disciplines. I had great conversations with people in Brain and Behavioral Science, and in physics and in mathematics, and social science, and it was good.”
An acclaimed poet, critic, and essayist, Turner published around 20 books during his 35-year tenure at UT Dallas. He’s known for epics – long narrative poems recounting heroic deeds – such as “The New World: An Epic Poem” (1985), “Genesis: An Epic Poem of the Terraforming of Mars” (1988), and “Apocalypse: An Epic Poem” (2016).
To develop these grand fictional settings, unforgettable characters, and captivating plots, Turner incorporated the most current insights from science, psychology, and socio-political theory into every aspect of his narrative.
“I was obsessive about the research,” he said. “I was also researching in an interdisciplinary way, because there are a hundred disciplines that apply, including engineering concepts and that sort of thing. I also asked people. I knew a lot of scientists and other experts, and I asked some questions and got very interesting answers.”
His use of factual knowledge to enrich his narratives exemplifies how the humanities unify disciplines and give meaning and application to any topic, he said. Through literature and poetry, Turner employed the humanities as “the intellectual and imaginative glue” that binds together disparate fields of study.
“There are disciplines which are much more involved with specific content, with acquiring certain distinct kinds of facts, so to speak,” he added. “But without a way of putting them together with all the other specialized kinds of information that is around, the facts lie there inert and don’t contribute to real advancement or to a real enlargement of ideas.”
Although Turner retired from UT Dallas in 2020, he remains close to the University, contributing through talks and attending lectures.
When Turner joined UT Dallas, the Student Union was new, The Mercury was printing its first issues, and the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Sciences opened its doors. In 1989 – four years into Turner’s UT Dallas teaching journey – the University began enrolling freshmen and sophomores.
Since then, the legacy school he served for three-and-a-half decades has undergone several transformations. In July 2022, the School of Arts and Humanities merged with the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication to form the School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology. Nearly a year later, the school received a transformative $40 million gift from The Harry W. Bass Jr. Foundation. It enabled the renaming of the school as the Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology.
“I was thrilled with the great Bass donation because they obviously understood the importance of the humanities as the intellectual and imaginative glue that attaches all the other disciplines together and gives meaning and application.”