When Laura Knoppers lost her husband in December 2018, she didn’t know how to think straight, let alone find the words to write his obituary.
It's rare for an English professor not to know what to say, so then-doctoral student Ala Fink helped Knoppers manage the task by collecting New York Times obituaries for reference and inspiration.
This, and many other kind acts, carried Knoppers through her loss as students and colleagues rallied around her with more support than she expected from a community she had only been a part of for four and a half years.
“It was like we’d been here for 25 years,” she said. “Notre Dame is such a strong faith community in times of crisis.”
For Knoppers, mentoring graduate students is more than a professional obligation, it’s a way of giving back — returning and sustaining the support she’s received from her academic community over the course of her career.
The George N. Shuster Professor of English Literature and chair of the Department of English has supervised 10 complete dissertations in her career, is currently directing four more in-progress, and has been a committee member for more than 30 others.
In recognition of her commitment to nurturing the next generation of scholars, Knoppers is the recipient of the 2025 College of Arts & Letters Graduate Student Mentorship Award. This honor is given annually to a tenured faculty member who has demonstrated outstanding mentorship and care to graduate students.
“She is unmatched in discerning in conversations with students and their early drafts — not only what they are trying to achieve, but how their dissertations can be more original, more vitally engaging current work in the field, and more significant than the students themselves imagined,” wrote Stephen M. Fallon, an emeritus professor of English, in his letter nominating Knoppers for the award. “I admire and envy Laura's skill as a mentor of graduate students.”
The award will be presented to Knoppers at the college’s spring faculty meeting at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 6, at McKenna Hall. At the same meeting, American studies professor Sophie White will receive the Arts & Letters Research Award.
“I always liked working with graduate students before Notre Dame,” Knoppers said, “but there’s something really special about it here.”
Expanding the field
Knoppers came to the University of Notre Dame in 2014 along with her husband, Gary Knoppers, who was the John A. O’Brien Professor of Theology.
In addition to the excellent reputation of the Departments of Theology and English in the College of Arts & Letters, the couple was drawn to Notre Dame from Penn State University because of their love of working with graduate students.
“Literature teaches us empathy. It helps with the very qualities we need — being able to understand other points of view and other values and to imagine other worlds.”
- Laura Knoppers, George N. Shuster Professor of English Literature and chair of the Department of English
“It was a late-career move, but it was a good move because it reinvigorated both of us,” Knoppers said.
As she supports and enhances the work of her graduate students, Knoppers has found that her own scholarly pursuits are also enriched.
“Working with students on skills of analysis and argument lets you bring fresh eyes to your own writing,” she said.
Knoppers has studied the poet John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, for over 30 years, and edited the journal Milton Studies for almost a decade. She’s received support for her work from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Bibliographical Society of America, and the Pew Charitable Trusts, and in 2016, she was named the Honored Scholar of the Year by the Milton Society of America for her lifetime achievement in Milton studies.
She’s written about Milton and politics, Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution, Milton and news media, transatlantic puritanism, Milton in popular culture, and more — and mentorship is part of how she gains inspiration.
“I got interested in early modern women — which isn’t an obvious combination with Milton — through graduate student interests,” Knoppers said.
She studies literature in the first place because it offers the opportunity to make unique links between literary works and cultural history. No matter her research question — such as “What do we understand about Milton at a time of revolution?” or “What are the rhetorical uses of the monstrous at moments of political crisis?” — Knoppers works toward connection.
“Literature teaches us empathy,” she said. “It helps with the very qualities we need — being able to understand other points of view and other values and to imagine other worlds.”
She passes along that thought to her mentees. Ph.D. candidate Matthew McCullough, who is currently working on his thesis “Prophecy and Literature in 17th-Century Poetry and Art,” confirmed the value of Knoppers’ influence in his development as a scholar.
“Her extraordinary intelligence and expertise in the field have been invaluable, shaping not only the direction of my research but also the way I approach scholarship as a whole,” McCullough wrote in his award nomination letter. “Her keen insights and rigorous engagement with my work have challenged me to refine my arguments, think more critically, and push my analysis further than I thought possible.”
Helping students find their voices
A key highlight of the mentoring experience, Knoppers said, is that she doesn’t have to give out grades.
“It changes the relationship, making it more collaborative,” she said. “Mentoring involves a lot of discussion and brainstorming and figuring out exactly what they want to work on.”
While undergraduate students focus on building writing and analytical skills, graduate students are tasked with joining preexisting academic conversations. They need to first identify which conversations to join and what intervention they want to make, which is where things can get tricky.
“They have to learn the field,” Knoppers said. “They have to learn what questions they want to ask and where to look for the answers.”
Knoppers finds herself exploring new questions and answers in her own work, including in her current book project, “Luxury Restored: Literature, Cultural Politics, and the Court of Charles II.” In it, she brings together materials from various fields — literature, art history, and political and cultural history — to offer new interpretations of well-known works of visual art and literature.
In her mentorship, the goal is for her graduate students to do the same. Knoppers aims to strike a balance between providing feedback and stepping back in order to help them evolve from student to scholar and colleague.
“It’s rewarding to see how much they can grow, how much they can learn, how they can find their own voice and figure out what their own intervention is,” Knoppers said.
Mentees credit Knoppers’ feedback process, saying that her comments have both clarified and challenged their research as she builds their professional self-confidence.
But beyond showing them how to be better scholars, Knoppers’ students say she has also helped them become better people.
“She has become a role model, not only for her brilliance as a scholar, but also for demonstrating how to pursue and receive ideas with curiosity, humility, and grace,” wrote Ph.D. candidate Sarah Baber. “From providing supervision during coursework to co-chairing my candidacy exams and dissertation, she has shaped my graduate studies into a joyful and formative experience.”
Originally published by at al.nd.edu on April 30, 2025.