Janet M. Mueller, the William Rainey Harper Professor Emerita in the department of English language and literature at the University of Chicago and former dean of the Humanities Division, died on October 21 in Chicago. She was 83 years old.
A native of Chicago, Professor Mueller was the valedictorian of the Class of 1959 at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. She earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1965. Dr. Mueller taught for one year at the University of Illinois before joining the faculty at the University of Chicago as a lecturer in 1967.
A member of the University faculty for nearly four decades, Dr. Mueller was the first woman to lead an academic division at the University of Chicago. In her first four years on the faculty, Mueller had been the only woman teaching in the department of English.
Professor Mueller’s research centered on advancing our knowledge of 16th-century English vernacular and translation, 16th- and 17th-century poetry (especially John Donne and John Milton), and a bracing range of intellectual texts and topics from the English Reformation. Among her scholarly achievements, she co-edited four volumes of letters, prayers, speeches, and translations of Queen Elizabeth I.