Manhattan College To Award Doctor Of Humane Letters To Thomas J. Heffernan ’68 At Fall Honors Convocation

RIVERDALE, N.Y. – Dr. Thomas J. Heffernan ’68 Ph.D., who holds the Kenneth Curry Professorship at the University of Tennessee (UT), will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters at Manhattan College’s Fall Honors Convocation on Sunday, Oct. 19 at 4:00 p.m in the Chapel of De La Salle and His Brothers.

During the ceremony, nearly 150 seniors will be recognized for their academic excellence and inducted into Epsilon Sigma Pi, the oldest college-wide honor society. Induction into Epsilon Sigma Pi is considered the highest scholastic honor that can be earned by a Manhattan College student.

A native of New York City, Heffernan is a member of the departments of English and religious studies and the program in Medieval Studies at UT. He earned his doctorate in religious literature and reform in late antiquity and the Middle Ages at Cambridge University, where he was the recipient of the Emmanuel College scholarship.

Upon completion of his Ph.D., Heffernan was awarded a fellowship by the Medieval Academy of America for the study of Latin palaeography at Harvard University. He is the author of The Popular Literature of Medieval England (1978), Sacred Biography (1988), and the co-author of The Liturgy of the Medieval Church (2001) and Scripture and Pluralism (2006).

In addition, Heffernan is currently completing a critical edition of the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis for the series Ancient Christian Authors, and he edited the prestigious journal Studies in the Age of Chaucer for 10 years. He has written some 50 plus scholarly essays and reviews and has lectured and taught in the United States and abroad.

His scholarship has received numerous awards, including the Medieval Academy of America’s Van Courtland Eliot Prize and most recently the National Endowment of the Humanities. He has been the recipient of several fellowships and received the Alumni Outstanding Teaching Citation by UT, the most significant teaching award presented by the university.

Members of the media who would like to cover the event should call Scott Silversten at (718) 862-7232 or e-mail scott.silversten@manhattan.edu. Manhattan College is located at West 242nd Street near Broadway in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, one mile from the Westchester County line and accessible by MTA subway line 1.

Founded in 1853, Manhattan College is an independent, Catholic, coeducational institution of higher learning offering more than 40 major programs of undergraduate study in the areas of arts, business, education, engineering and science, along with graduate programs in education and engineering. For more information about Manhattan College, visit www.manhattan.edu.