I met Emma in 1982, in an NEH summer seminar on postmodernism that was led by Ihab Hassan. We spent eight weeks going to meetings together, discussing difficult, abstract theory, socializing, and (most of all) just reading. It was clear after the first week or so that Emma was genuinely engaged with ideas, was sincerely committed to figuring things out, to clarifying some issues and expressing well-informed opinions that helped make the seminar work for the others. Yet she never dominated discussion, always allowed the others to speak first. We followed up by being on a conference panel or two, and then, after about a decade or so, sadly lost touch. She was an extraordinary thinker, scholar, and person--kind and compassionate---empathetic yet wise. She will be terribly missed.

In our small family of four, now three, Emma being our parent, she was and wanted to be the defining identity of the family, who we were and are.

She wanted to teach me as her daughter-in-law many things from the family tradition, to American life because I think that she wanted me to be informed and be more appropriate in my adopted culture.

I have many fond memories of her. Some random things that I run into daily trigger those memories.

Letters with newspaper and journal scraps
Emma regularly sent us letters. Whenever she found some newspaper articles, cartoons, or language related journal articles that Rob and/or I might be interested in, she sent them to us with a short note on them. At the beginning of our marriage, we received frequent newspaper scraps from her on many topics. Sometimes, before her visit to us, she sent us some info about the exhibitions that she wanted to go to with us. Although the number of her letters subsided over time since we became more accustomed to sending electronic correspondence, receiving letters with her unique handwriting is one of my fond memories of her.

Watermelon, seafood, and kimchi
It was Emma’s first visit to our apartment right after we got married. I was not sure what would be the most appropriate way to treat her as my mother-in-law. I think that Rob, being her son, kept telling me that she would appreciate anything we prepared for her. I decided not to cook because I was still learning how to cook. Eventually, we decided to take her out for dinner at a nearby Korean restaurant. When she arrived at our apartment, while waiting for dinner out, I took out from the refrigerator a huge bowl of watermelon cut in small cubes. I was not sure whether she would like it, but the weather was getting warmer and the watermelon was sweet and chilled in the refrigerator. I offered some to Emma (still being concerned whether she would like it or not). She had several and then more. I was so happy and relieved to know that I made something that she liked. Since then, when she came to visit us, she wanted to have food that she and I liked but Rob did not such as raw oysters and crabs because she thought that I could not eat enough of those because of Rob. There was a small, old crab house near our old apartment, where we could get takeout steamed crabs (Rob would not want to touch or even smell it). Emma and I took home a full bag of crabs and happily went through the slow process to get the meat out of the hard shells while Rob was watching us happily(?) because Emma, not him, took the role to eat the crabs with me.
Emma knew that turkey was not a common food that I grew up with. I could handle it once a year for Thanksgiving. For the first several years of Thanksgiving dinner with my American family, Emma found an eclectic way to introduce the culture. For a while, we had kimchi and rice on the thanksgiving dinner table.

Baking
Emma and I baked cheesecake and German Chocolate cake together, which I thought was almost like a ritual to her in that she wanted to follow the steps and measurements, accurately. I am not a baker, but thanks to her, I can bake good cheesecake and German chocolate cake.

Earrings
Emma, one day, wrote me an email with a long list of presents that she would be happy to receive from me, knowing that I sometimes had a hard time figuring out a good present for her. The easiest one for us was to find little earrings in the colors or shapes that Emma liked. Since I got the list, whenever we travelled, we looked for a nice pair of earrings for her. After her passing, looking at earrings at a store, I suddenly realized that Emma was not with us anymore. 

Cute bottles of hard liquor
The four of us went to one of the Florida Keys one Christmas. I do not exactly remember what led her to decide to buy three or four little bottles of liquor, Baileys and others. At the store, she was direct and very specific about what she wanted. We shared a little of each one at our rented vacation house. It was another cultural experience for me, more unique than wine tasting... 

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue
Emma was an organizer and collector. She wanted to hand down many things to Rob and me. Occasionally, during our visit to her, she handed to us little things that she kept for a long time, such as an old neckless, wine glasses, family photos, paintings, books, Rob’s childhood drawings, tiny perfume (?) bottles, games and so on with stories about them. Looking around our place, I find many things to remember her by.

Emma was a serious scholar to her students and colleagues, but I remember her more as a caring and generous parent and role-model for Paul, Rob and me.

Emma was a great influence on me during my years at the St. Louis Conservatory (1977-80) and she inspired me to pursue and obtain my M.A. in Comparative Literature at Wash. U. (1980-82). There, I studied for two years with her and her amazing mentors, Bill Matheson and Liselotte Dieckmann, and even taught some undergrad courses as a T.A. under her direct supervision. During my first year, I also worked for her as part of my financial aid program. It was such a cushy job - basically I would go to the library a few hours every week to copy excerpts from various books she was interested in for her research. I was astounded by her far-reaching expertise and her curiosity, and by following the thematic thread of her bibliographical research, I could glimpse the intuition and method behind her logical train of thought. Being curious myself, I would sometimes ask her about one the quotes I had fetched, and I remember how her eyes would come alive, she’d throw back her chin just a little, as if to say “Ah-ha!” and she would begin very slowly, testing the depth of my interest so as never to bore or lecture in a vacuum. These were the signs of the marvelous teacher and human being that she was.

She showed no disappointment when I chose not to pursue my Ph.D. in Comp Lit, and continued to be interested in my musical career long after I emigrated to Europe. We kept in touch for a few years until time and distance made our contact rare. When I think back on her years of service at the St. Louis Conservatory – a side gig for her, really – I’m convinced she felt a special affinity with us musicians. Though we studied the language of sound, she understood how structure, syntax and symbolism were as vital for music as they were for poetry and literature. The general feeling I had, and I believe all my fellow students had, was that she was one of us!

Emma was always patient, sensitive but never sentimental, encouraging, discreet, respectful, non-judgmental and had an ever-youthful, mischievous sense of humor. I hope as a teacher I can leave a lasting positive impression on my students as she did with me.

Thank you Paul and Rob so much for your memorial notice about my dear friend Emma. My heart breaks with your family for your loss. I regret that Emma and I only talked by phone.  From college days, we often sat in her kitchen discussing Robb-Grillet and Marguerite Duras as well as narrative in the novel. We talked of comp. lit and the mysterious lives of poets like Arthur Rimbaud. We shared the intensity of friendship. Her love of kitties inspired me to
adopt a pet myself. I quote from Rimbaud: My eternal soul/ redeem your promise/despite the night clime/ another day on fire. 
 

Our sincere condolences to you, Paul and Rob, through this difficult time. I’m sure you know this, but your mother was an inspirational and tough teacher that made an incredible impression on my wife Quyên and me when we were students in her Postmodern Literature class in 2003. Professor Kafalenos taught difficult material and was not afraid to push us to struggle intellectually and creatively - she trusted us to have the capacity to learn and to develop strange new pathways alongside her and our classmates. It was that struggle that made the epiphanies at the end all that much more joyous and significant. Our class was full of intellectual misfits who were interested in a wide range of fields -art/photography/storytelling/film/history/literature - and Professor Kafalenos built us a space where we could be truly creative
with our thoughts. It was a tight knit group - and we don’t exactly know what this says about Postmodern Lit - but from a seminar class of just 12 people, three couples met there and later married.

Thank you for everything, Professor Kafalenos!

Much Love,
Erik and Quyên

Posted by LaDonna (Henry) Justice

Emma Mellard Kafalenos enriched two periods of my life. During childhood and adolescence, we shared in the joys and challenges of girlhood in the small but supportive community of Montgomery City, Missouri. Educational and cultural experiences enabled by her parents expanded our horizons and elevated our self-expectations. Preoccupied with college, marriage, family, and careers in diverse locations we lost track of each other for some time. Well into womanhood, we reconnected on her fiftieth birthday and began ongoing communication about our lives and views of the world around us. Maturity requires change. Over time, however, Emma consistently embraced life with remarkable intellectual creativity and resolve while genuinely respecting and encouraging the individuality and potential of others – especially, her sons, her students, and her friends. Missing Emma, matters we should discuss keep popping up.

LaDonna (Henry) Justice

Emma was a big presence in the Humanities community at Washington University when I arrived in 2001 to teach in Classics, and she was always kind, welcoming, and engaged. Year after year, I saw evidence of her energetic mentorship of students at Comparative Literature gatherings. And I cannot resist mentioning the most memorable example of her influence: the year that it was announced that Phyllis Schlafly was going to get an honorary degree, she sent a brief, politely worded query to the Association of Women Faculty email list, along the lines of "should we perhaps respond to this?" Within hours, a movement had erupted and many of us had the opportunity to participate in the event that day by handing out leaflets and wearing ERA buttons. That was a significant contribution to an important event on our campus! Thank you for that and everything, Emma.

Dear Paul, dear Rob,

thanks for informing us about this website. And again our heartfelt condolences to you and yours! We feel immensely saddened by your – and our – loss, but also recall with great affection and vivid remembrance the time we were privileged to spend with your mother, from our first joint encounter in May 1988 (I had already met Emma during the on-campus job interview earlier that year, in February I believe it was, Christl met her for the first time in May) to our last encounter with her in 2010 or 2011, when she stayed with us at our home in Leatherhead, Surrey, after attending a conference further north in England. (This was a year or two before the 2013 Manchester conference where she broke her femur: she was planning on visiting us that year, too, but was then unable to come due to her operation and being forced to return home directly.) 

During her stay with us in Leatherhead, a small town on the outskirts of Greater London, but within the Surrey Greenbelt, we took Emma on an outing to Box Hill, the famous setting of the picnic in Jane Austen’s novel Emma. From there one has a wonderful view across the Surrey and Sussex landscape, nearly down to the Channel, the view on which is obstructed only by the beautiful South Downs that rise hazily in the distance. We had a memorable dinner with your mum in one of the local historical pubs, the Running Horses, in the picturesque countryside hamlet of Mickleham, with its beautiful Norman church and typically English wooden-gated churchyard. But of course, no tepid British ale for her – red wine it had to be, to accompany the kidneys she had selected as her main course (perhaps in homage to James Joyce’s character Leopold Bloom).

From a less Arcadian and more academic perspective, what sticks in my memory are the countless discussions on Propp, on postmodern fiction, on John Barth (some of whose short stories she copied for me because she considered them essential reading: and indeed they were) and Arno Schmidt, and all manner of things literary and artistic. Emma was a literary polyglot and an inveterate hermeneutic traveller, at home in as many languages and texts as art forms and discourse types. And it was she who helped me to at long last grasp the difference between recit and sujet.

Above all, though, what remains a fixture in Christl’s and my memory is something that you may both well remember yourselves: namely our stay with her in May 1988, when we relocated from Texas to Saint Louis and she offered us her guest room (the rear bedroom) as a transitional home while we were apartment hunting in University City. We got to know the two of you during this period. What you may not be aware of is just how much time she gave and how much help she volunteered in order to help us find a new home; we arrived late on a Friday by car (packed with our essentials) from Arlington, Texas; it was well beyond 10 p.m., and we spent that first evening talking until well past midnight. For Saturday she had – based on our telephone conversations a week or two earlier – arranged five apartment viewings, for Sunday another three. By Sunday evening we had signed a contract for our apartment in University City, a week later we had moved in – the removal truck having delivered our things safely early in the week – and Emma was our first dinner guest in our new domicile. We will never forget her warm welcome and profound generosity.

Emma was a great founding member of STL Village. She was the reason we began our monthly social poker gathering. It was one of my favorite things I got to do as part of the village. Emma was all in! She loved her cards and to joke and to tell stories. I will miss Emma and our times together. Arthur Culbert

“I think we’re going to get out of this,” Emma told me. She was driving me home after dinner at her favorite restaurant where we could get, as she phrased it, “a decent glass of wine,” At a deserted intersection, there was a police car lurking, quite unnecessarily in my (our) view, and she had sailed past a blinking red traffic light without coming to a full stop. It was dark, and now this. Emma’s sang froid impressed me, and it impressed the policeman. There was something about her “Certainly, Officer,” that boded well. She loved to drive, the sports car may have been new, and no mere police encounter was going to spoil her pleasure in the evening. There was a neat driver’s license and a neat registration. There was no ticket. There was no crisis.
Emma had that ability to be in the moment and to rise above it. Perhaps the classic example is what happened when she broke her femur (I think it was her femur) in Manchester, England. In my humble opinion, any normal person would have accepted her son’s offer to see her through the surgery and to see her home, but Emma had utter confidence in her ability to manage on her own, and she did. She was slightly lame ever after, but she loved to travel and travel she did. There’s a new contemporary art gallery in rural Connecticut? Let’s go! Of course I wasn’t the one who went—she went, with her son Paul.
   I loved to hear Emma talk about her family farm, her mathematical mother, her Christmas puddings, and her sons. I admired her zealous modernism, and won’t ever forget the way her face crumpled when I spoiled a trip to the St. Louis Art Museum. We were there for a terrific Rothko show, and I was constructing a narrative that had to do with the stages of the artist’s life. Emma didn’t want to hear it. It was the form, the technique, the materials that entranced her.
   For all her love of abstraction, Emma was grounded, too—gave me good practical advice when I was contemplating some foolish action. “Oh you mustn’t do that,” she would say. Or: “Vivian, let me show you.”
   I wish she had let me do more for her in her last months when she was virtually housebound, but that was not to be, and in any event we were still making plans to get together for dinner the next month when Paul let me know that she had died. Sic transit. I’ll always be glad that I told her I loved her in what I remember as our last phone call. I marvel at her timing in leaving us just before a global pandemic, when we are all virtually housebound, and when even celebrations of an extraordinary life are forced to be virtual, distant, incorporeal. At times like these, I like to remember her saying, blinking red light or no, lurking policeman or no, “I think it’s going to be all right.” Speak to me. Take my hand.

Vivian Pollak

Posted by Gerhild Scholz Williams

Emma Kafalenos has been a great friend and wonderful colleague for many years. Her devotion to the field of Comparative Literature was absolute, her contribution to the teaching of Comparative Arts without equal. As a colleague she was unfailingly supportive, trustworthy, and, when needed, clear and outspoken in her assessment of our work. Alongside her interest in Comparative Arts, she became an expert in Narratology, an area in which she published highly recognized and oft-quoted essays as well as a book.

Her commitment to her students made her a popular and highly respected teacher and mentor. A brief sentence from a former student sums it up beautifully, “she guided my path at a time I felt lost.”

Longtime friends, Emma and I regularly spent time together sharing meals and conversations about our families, our profession, and our plans for the future. I am grateful for having known Emma as a friend and colleague. We will all miss her presence among us very much!

Gerhild Scholz Williams

Emma was always incredibly generous with advice and materials when I turned to her with questions about teaching narrative theory or topics in comparative literature. Faculty often think of their syllabi and course materials as their intellectual property, but Emma never hesitated to send me her course book of Baudelaire's poetry, or an annotated list of important narrative theorists for a graduate class. When I asked her if she would mind if I taught one of her signature courses in the nineteenth-century European novel one semester, she didn't hesitate to give me her blessing. One always hopes that University teaching will engage one in a community of intellectual conversation and shared scholarship. It doesn't always prove to be the case. Emma lived that ideal.

I first got to know Dr. Emma Kafalenos during my time as a graduate student in the early 2010s.

Going on, I will remember her inimitable laugh.

I will remember that she enjoyed the finer things in life: wine, escargot, late James, cats.

I will remember that if I was working on a project I should show it to her last, because if it got past her it was ready for the world.

I will remember her pacing about in front of the classroom, the text of the day bristling with yellow, handwritten notes.

I will remember that every time I visited her in her office our conversation would end with her pressing a photocopy of some exciting new article or story into my hands.

I will remember visiting her in a Mancunian hospital, in the immediate aftermath of a bad fall, and her one complaint was that she wasn’t allowed a nice drink.

I will remember that she wasn’t a conspicuous campus landmark, like the statue that everyone knows about, but that she was more like the perfectly baroque tree tucked away in a corner of the grounds or that obviously best seat in the library that the sunlight hits just so, endlessly appreciated by those happy folks in the know, and if you run across someone else who gets it the way you do then it’s like stumbling across another member of a secret club and you immediately approve of their good taste. And of course every time you’re back on campus you swing by your tree or glance in on your chair, just to make sure everything’s as it should be, and then one day they’re just gone and the school is still the school, of course, but it doesn’t feel quite as much like your school as it used to.

I am very sad to learn this news, which comes at an already upsetting time for most of us. Emma was a very bright, joyful, and enthusiastic humanist who always had time to discuss deep subjects and help anyone needing an astute mind and generous heart. I will always remember her knowing smile, sparkling eyes, and completely honest laugh whenever someone said or did anything funny, clever or noteworthy. As others have stated, she was a major pillar not just of Liberal Arts at WashU in particular, but of the literary and art history professions in general. This is because beyond just brains and wit, what each of these institutions can always use are genuinely fine people. And Emma was all these things. I am extremely sorry for our and her family's loss.   

Emma would roll her eyes reading this sentimental tribute. She was not particularly sentimental. So many have already attested to her intellectual acuity, her outstanding teaching and generosity to colleagues and students, all absolutely true and greatly deserved. That said, I feel privileged to have also gotten to know Emma in another way.

Emma and I met roughly 12 years ago. We had both been familiar with one another through students we had in common at Washington University. I can’t remember the number of Communication Design students I taught in the Sam Fox School who told me I needed to meet Professor Kafalenos. They thought I’d really like her.

I bought a condo in the Crown Lofts in 2008. My real estate agent told me there was another WU faculty member living in the building. The particulars of our formal meeting escape me, but somehow we came to be good friends.

At first I was quite intimidated, to say the least. However, meeting someone in their bathrobe with regularity, on a mission to get newspapers, has a way of making one feel more at ease. Ultimately, we came up with a system so only one of us would need to flag about.

Emma and I were girl friends. While we shared a real interest in art, music, design and architecture, our relationship came to be one of shared lives and experiences. We covered a lot; childhood, coming of age, marriage, divorce, raising children, and aging.

We enjoyed dinners with one another at our condos, grateful we didn’t need to drive home. Of course Emma suppled the wine! We took care of one another’s cats when we were away, sending photos to show that they were managing to live without us. We shared the same hair stylist and wonderful internist. We consulted on decor. Early in our relationship, we took late night swims together in our building’s swimming pool. Emma didn’t like the sun. She drove us to concerts in her Fiat Abarth, shocking parking attendants when she would step out of the car, an unlikely driver for such a zippy car. She took great pleasure in this.

She could be a bit of a pill.

When I had to get a fancy dress for my partner Sam’s son’s wedding in Bermuda, I wanted to make a good impression and was stymied by what to wear. Black wasn’t going to cut it. She dragged me tirelessly through Frontenac, scrutinizing the hundreds (so it seemed) dresses I tried on. At some point I begged to go home. She would have none of it. Yes, I did end up with a wonderful dress as a result of Emma’s perseverance.

Sam and I announced we were going to get married. Emma wanted to know if she could take me shopping for my wedding outfit, even though she was already on oxygen.

As Emma’s health declined I also faced a serious health challenge. Our support and empathy for one another’s struggles, our shared fears and concerns gave us both comfort. At some point near the end, she would raise her arms for a hug as I left from visiting or bringing her “seedy buns” and almond butter, a favorite lunch.

I’m sad Emma won’t be at my wedding. I’m sad there will be no more concerts together or shared bottles of wine. I hope she knew how much she meant to me and how grateful I am for all she gave. I’m missing my dear friend.

I'm adapting what I wrote to the listserv of the Narrative Society, shortly after Brian McHale informed us of the news of Emma's passing. I'll then add a few additional comments.

A few memories.  I first encountered Emma when she submitted a proposal in the early 1990s for the Narrative Society’s first session at the MLA conference after the Society had achieved its status as an Allied Organization.  I remember thinking to myself, who is this person doing these one-of-a-kind new things with the work of Vladimir Propp on the links between story events?  Dan Schwarz and I accepted the proposal, and from there, I think it’s fair to say, Emma and the Society had a mutually enriching relationship.

Emma's book, Narrative Causalities (2006) which I had the pleasure of reviewing for the Ohio State University Press, had its roots in that early MLA paper, something I mention only to highlight that Emma was an extraordinarily careful and painstaking writer and thinker. The book was the product of many years of testing out ideas, formulating them as precisely as possible, and then revising them further. She cared deeply about our field and her own work in it and held herself—and others—to high standards.
Emma, Gerry Prince, and I worked for many years as coordinators of the Contemporary Narratology panels at the annual conference. I think Gerry would agree that Emma was the leader of our group, and, in that role, she was always an advocate for bringing in scholars who were expanding the field and who would collectively give a snapshot of its diversity. The first set of Contemporary Narratology panels were held during the Atlanta Conference in 2000, and they led to a special issue of Narrative with Emma as a guest-editor (volume 9, no. 2, 2001). Over time these sessions morphed into the current plenary sessions at the annual conference on “Contemporary Narrative Theory.”
Emma also worked with Erin McGlothlin to organize the excellent 2011 Conference in St. Louis. She was very proud to be able to host so many people whose work she valued.

Emma and I didn’t always agree about matters theoretical, and I sometimes had the feeling that she was just humoring me and my wacky ideas.  But our disagreements typically made our conversations lively and enjoyable. I am in Brian McHale's company of including her in the group of my favorite people.

Emma did me the honor of inviting me to speak at a ceremony for her retirement. It was a wonderful couple of days. I got to spend some time talking life and literature with Emma. I visited her class, had lunch with some students, and dinner with some of her colleagues. The experience gave me a new appreciation for all that she'd accomplished in her time at Washington U, especially how much she meant to her students. As I write these reflections, I miss Emma more deeply, but that feeling makes me more grateful to have known her as a colleague and friend for so many years.

As a piano student during the early 80’s at the St. Louis Conservatory of Music, I took English and literature classes from Emma. She was a born teacher – she knew how to engage students, made us think, and let us believe that what we thought and how we felt truly mattered. Her classes were fascinating, even mesmerizing at times. I often skipped my music classes and spent a good amount of time reading and writing for her class when I was not at the piano. My English was still at an infantile stage, so I was elated when I received an A- from Emma on one of the assignments instead of the usual B’s. I remember that essay’s subject had to do with abortion. Decades later, I noticed that the bumper sticker on her custom ordered Fiat read “Keep Abortion Legal and Safe.”

Emma knew back then I did not have a place to practice during breaks when school buildings were closed, so she gave me an open invitation to practice at her house on Gannon. She had a very nice Baldwin L which was her birthday present from her parents when she turned 16. After practicing several hours on that piano, I would sit with Emma at her kitchen table and have long talks into the night. Occasionally, Paul and Rob would come in and out, but looking back now, they probably were trying to get away from the annoying sound of piano practicing. One day Emma was decorating her Christmas tree while I was there. Being a perfectionist, she would carefully hang an ornament, then walk back about 12 feet to look and ensure that each ornament was placed just right. I think of Emma every time I decorate a Christmas tree.

When Emma was moving to her condo from her house in University City, she reached out to me asking if I wanted her piano. At first, I thought she wanted to sell the piano and was asking if I would be interested (which of course I would have been, considering the quality of the piano, not to mention the sentimental value), but I soon realized that she actually wanted to give me the piano ‘if’ I wanted it. 14 years later, I am still overwhelmed by her generosity. Emma’s piano, which she thought we should refer to as “our” piano, has been happy in my house, being loved and played every day. “Our” piano since then received a new set of hammers, shanks and strings. Emma was so pleased with the sound when I sent her a video clip of a scherzo movement of Beethoven Sonata after all the work was done.

I’ve always admired Emma’s extraordinary intellectual capacity. I would half-jokingly tell my best friend Jeanine how I would be exhausted after spending an evening with Emma, as I had to gather all my energy together trying to keep up with her brain power which I never could anyway. I also loved Emma’s blunt honesty. When her book Narrative Causalities was published, I asked her if this was something I should read, or I could comprehend. Her answer was a short, decisive “no.” She also told me once that she could not stand Mozart and Alberti Bass. I was heartbroken as I love Mozart’s music so much.

Emma would sometimes surprise me by sending me books, St. Louis Cardinals removable tattoos, or a big spread from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about Yadier Molina. For someone who almost always did what she wanted to do and successfully lived her life on her own terms, she had to be the most considerate and caring person. Emma certainly was not the huggy, physically affectionate type and didn’t usually express her affections using words. I remember the time when Emma and I were sitting in a museum café during a challenging period of my life. I was talking about mundane things, trying to avoid the painful topic in our conversation. After a while, there was a silence, then Emma asked me a simple, well thought-out question in such a kind, loving way that struck a chord with all my emotions. I could not even look at her realizing how much she cared, and that she was hurting with me. I will always remember and miss her loving kindness.

It was in the early morning of January 1, 2020 in Seoul when I received an email from Paul about Emma’s passing. During my long flight back, I thought about how Emma had enriched my life in so many ways. What a profound impact and influence Emma had and will continue to have on all of us who were so very fortunate to have known her. Yet, in one of her last text messages to me, in her typical Emma’s fashion, she simply said, “yes, sometimes life turns out well.”

I met Emma when I arrived as a graduate student in the early 1970‘s. Emma always impressed with her sharp mind, depth of knowledge and generosity of spirit. She also became a good friend and her home was a welcoming place for our whole circle. I have pleasant memories of the weekly poker games, which Emma usually hosted, and which – despite the low stakes – could make the difference between a lean week and a fat one, since we were all living on fellowships. I remember the occasional babysitting with the young Paul and Rob (Bobby, back then) and evenings spent translating Philippe Sollers at Emma’s kitchen table, aided and abetted by glasses of brandy.

I’ve lived in Europe since leaving St Louis and Emma always remained a true friend. Her academic travels over the years enabled us to meet and explore the art of Paris, Berlin and London. Not so long ago, we combined a visit to the stone circles of Avebury and Stonehenge with Salisbury and Winchester cathedrals. Emma, mindful of her family’s heritage, wanted to try something typically English, which she declared to be kidneys. So we steeled ourselves and produced a steak and kidney pie. Emma subsequently sent us a commemorative fridge magnet picturing blackbirds escaping from a pie, which still adorns our kitchen.

Emma’s friendship was our privilege. Her warmth, insight and wisdom will not leave us.

Gil Kennedy

Emma Kafalenos was a founding member of STL Village in 2014. The mission of our organization is to support older adults in the St. Louis community who desire to "age in place". Emma was an active and vocal member of our Village and enjoyed participating in our programs and activities. Several years ago, Emma organized a social poker group that has ben meeting monthly for the past four years. Emma was always willing to share her opinion and suggestions and never left you wondering where she stood on an issue. Emma loved fine wine and jazz. Emma would always bring a bottle of wine to our events because she did not tolerate mediocre brands. I recall several years ago when Emma traveled to Branson MO to spend time with friends. Her primary concern was not the drive or the winding roads but rather where she could find some good wine in Branson. I suggested that she try the Chateau on the Lake. She later informed me that this was an excellent recommendation. She would often get Village members together to attend theater and symphony performances or have dinner following our Happy Hours. Emma enjoyed the community that STL Village created.
Emma did not hesitate to address her concerns about the organization. However, her comments were always for the good of the organization and helped to make me a better Executive Director. STL Village will miss Emma's wit and brilliant contributions to our discussions. We are better as a Village because she passed our way. 

One of the first things I learned about Emma, during my first semester of teaching at Washington University (Spring 1975) was that she was a true comparatist. That is, in her studies she always drew upon literatures in several languages on the basis of her deep understanding; superficial comparisons (which only prove that two works are different, as Bill Matheson used to say) were of no interest to her, except as a starting point for more serious interrogations of the materials. She never stopped learning, never stopped expanding her range of expertise as her understanding of literature as a human creation continued to grow.. Emma’s later recognition as an international leader in the field of narrative studies was a consequence of this devotion—as was her unstinting service as teacher, mentor, and advisor, I believe. 

Emma worked tirelessly for decades to maintain and to build the programs in Comparative Literature at Washington University. She taught two or three courses each semester year after year in addition to overseeing the program in Comparative Arts (primarily literature and music) and advising majors, minors, and the other students in her classes. Initially she was officially only employed part-time, despite her greater than full-time dedication of effort throughout her teaching career. During the five years I served as Chair of the Committee on Comparative Literature I finally came to realize the depth of her passion for study and to appreciate her success in evoking similar commitments in her students and colleagues. In this she was truly inspiring to me, as she was to her students.

Getting to know Emma outside the University necessarily involved interaction with her cats. One time I went to her house to care for her cat while she was away, but the cat was distinctly displeased by my intrusion into her space. Although I eventually did successfully scoop the cat box and leave a new batch of food, I left the house somewhat bloodied amidst what could only be described as the nastiest imprecations available in the language of domesticated felids. I doubt that my retort on that occasion left any impression on the cat at all. Emma and I later shared a good laugh about it, but even her last cat remained unconvinced that I should be allowed to enter her space. Visiting Emma at her home was always an adventure in art appreciation and, often enough, the mutual enjoyment of wine even if the cat had her doubts. 

In Memory of Emma Kafalenos, April 11, 2021

I thought for a very long time that I knew Emma Kafalenos. We had occupied separate floors of the same building for nearly thirty years after all. Not until I became more closely affiliated with Comparative Literature, however, did I discover that I hadn’t really known her at all. And there was so much to discover about a teacher-scholar-colleague who loved a good bit of intellectual fun, was devoted to her advisees and students, and was playing a major role, internationally, in the study of narrative. When our friend and colleague Milica Banjanin passed away a little over a year ago, Emma emphasized to me the importance of remembering Milica, in my capacity as Director of Comparative Literature, not just as a dear friend but also as the intellectual and scholar she had been. Honoring Emma’s passionate insistence on behalf of our colleague and friend, I would like, with this tribute, to celebrate this particular aspect of Emma’s life. Others have written of the wonderful friend, the teacher, and the advisor that Emma was; indeed, these tributes poured in from students and colleagues when the sad news of her passing spread. Here then is one attempt to bring into view Emma Kafalenos, the intellectual and scholar.

Emma’s very first published essay from 1978 sounded questions that would shape her scholarly career: “Philippe Sollers’ Nombres: Structures and Sources.” From that year on, Emma published and gave scholarly papers steadily and regularly especially on such French avantgardists as Sollers and Robbe-Grillet. As a comparatist, she proved intrepid in crossing linguistic, medial, and generic boundaries, examining text and image and the narrativity of musical works, for example, but she also returned repeatedly to narrative structures and their effects, such as ambiguity. Patterns, order, sequence proved an endless source of productive scholarly fascination for Emma. She put together startling combinations, as for example in a 2003 piece in which she examined double coding as it represents new forms of representation in The Truman Show, Dorian Gray, ‘Blow-up,’ and Caprice in Purple and Gold, i.e., in film, narrative, and painting. Her essays consistently evince a keen eye and ear, prodigious analytical abilities, and wit and are quite simply exhilarating to read. While she principally addressed complex modern and postmodern texts, she also had a penetrating sense of the complexity of narratives of the everyday. Her brilliant 1988 essay, “Reading to Cook/ Cooking to Read: Structure in the Kitchen” deploys high theory to think about the every day reading of cookbooks, the organization of the kitchen, and the arrangement and layout of cookbooks in terms of narrative patterns. It is archly (and experimentally) written in the second person, in the language in which recipes are commonly shared.

Emma’s many essays appeared in path-breaking anthologies in the field of narratology as well as in signature venues such as Poetics Today, Narrative, and Comparative Literature. The crowning piece of her distinguished career was her book Narrative Causalities from 2006, a book that offers both an argument and a methodology, one that that provides an analytical vocabulary to compare interpretations of events in both everyday and aestheticized narratives. The place of this work in the field as a standard work was confirmed by its appearance as a paperback edition in 2015. 

In 2011 Emma Kafalenos and Erin McGlothlin brought the annual Narrative Conference to St. Louis—with its hundreds of attendees. The event vividly testified to the vibrancy of the study of narrative, the field in which Emma researched and wrote, and also to her standing in it. Indeed, beginning in the early 2000s, Emma, by then in her 60s, regularly served as a co-organizer of the annual conference, which, as I understand, steadily grew in the number of attendees in those years. And even when she passed into her 70s, Emma continued her vigorous organizational and scholarly work. After I had a taste of the 2010 conference, Emma easily persuaded me to attend the annual conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2012. We laughed repeatedly about the location and timing of the event: St. Patrick’s Day in one of America’s bawdiest cities. In any case, my time at that conference had a lasting influence on my own work. In the following years, especially after Emma retired and she had a bit more time, I repeatedly turned to her for information and advice. I’m still benefiting, for example, from references she sent my way on the case study, and I deeply appreciate how my collegial association with her led me to return to work on the formal properties of narration, something I had once thought I knew, but apparently didn’t very well, just as I had once thought I knew Emma.

Emma’s scholarly career strikingly came to fruition in the new millennium and reaped the respect and admiration of her peers. Her intellectual hunger and aesthetic discernment and appreciation stayed with her until her final days. I wish there had been more days, weeks, months, years. I, for one, would have come to know a lot more had Emma had more time.


Lynne Tatlock
Washington University in St. Louis

Emma was one of the most interesting people I ever had the pleasure of knowing. She was a constant presence in my life from a very young age as well as a lifelong friend to both of my parents.

Emma never treated me like a child and always encouraged me to think and comport myself as an adult. This always struck a chord with me and as Paul also experienced, I felt as though I had to live up to Emma's vision of what I could potentially become.

In my teenage years this meant trips to the St. Louis Art Museum to take in the latest exhibits or the Botanic Gardens, and these are very sweet memories to me. Never was an opportunity missed to learn something or infer a deeper meaning into art or literature that I had not challenged myself to explore before.

Emma was always special in this way and has certainly shaped my perspective of the world - to approach new sights, sounds and experiences with a fresh perspective when possible. She was well loved and well respected and to me, will always be remembered this way.

I was asked by the officers of the International Society for the Study of Narrative – of which Emma was a long-time, deeply committed member – to say a few words in memory of her at the Awards Luncheon on Saturday March 7, during the annual Narrative conference, which was held this year in New Orleans. This is what I said:

I have been asked to say a few words to honor our late friend and colleague Emma Kafalenos. As those of you who were reading the Narrative listserve back at the beginning of the year will know, Emma passed away at her home on the weekend after Christmas. She was 80 years old, and had been living with COPD for some time. Those of you who weren’t lucky enough to know her personally need to be aware that she always had your best interests at heart. A fine scholar herself, she was deeply committed to the advancement of narrative scholarship, and deeply invested in the success and intellectual well-being of the Narrative Society and of this conference. Together with her colleague Erin McGlothlin, she co-organized the Narrative Conference at Washington University in St. Louis in 2011, and she served as president of this Society in 2013. Jointly with Jim Phelan and Gerry Prince, she launched and for many years helped steer the Contemporary Narratology panels at our conferences, which over time have evolved into their current form as a series of plenary sessions on “Contemporary Narrative Theory.” I think Jim and Gerry would probably agree that it was Emma’s vision, more than anyone else’s, that made those panels – and now those plenaries – an invaluable feature of the Narrative conference, one that we could not do without. You are all Emma’s beneficiaries.

In her seminal book, Narrative Causalities, from 2006, Emma demonstrated one way of doing narrative theory well, namely by revisiting our intellectual forebears – in this case, Vladimir Propp, of all people! – and thinking about them afresh, asking new questions of them, and using them as springboards to new insights. Propp will never look boring and outdated to you again after you’ve read what Emma does with him. 

Many of you can attest – and have attested, in messages to our listserve – to Emma’s warmth and generosity, her intellectual openness and curiosity, her intensity, and her eccentricity. She was, as several of you testified, an excellent mentor of younger scholars. She liked people, ideas, and cats – not necessarily in that order – and she loved to talk shop; consequently, she loved this conference. But she also enjoyed playing hooky, and could be counted on for side-trips to museums or architectural wonders. She was an ideal dinner-companion. She was proud of her home, and of the art that she hung on its walls. She was nearly as knowledgeable about visual art as she was about literature, and had an excellent, educated eye; no surprise, then, that many of her later scholarly publications were about ekphrasis and other relations between the verbal and visual arts.

The story has been told, in some of the messages to our listserve, of how Emma suffered a terrible mishap on the first day of the 2013 Narrative conference at Manchester City University, in the U.K., slipping and breaking her femur, and spending the rest of the conference – and a good many days thereafter – in hospital, recuperating. She was tough and stoic, and never lost her sense of humor throughout the whole ordeal, but it was pretty heartbreaking: it was her year to be president, and she had to forego the pleasure of presiding over this conference, which nobody would have enjoyed doing more than Emma.

Finally, not to put too fine a point on it: Emma was an oddball. I say that with nothing but affection. Many of you, I’m sure, could tell oddball-Emma stories, and I encourage you to do so, so that they become part of our Society’s folklore. Here’s one of mine – a little wisp of a story, barely an anecdote, but typical. At one MLA Convention, I have no idea which year, I ran into Emma on our way to a panel, and she showed me, with pride – and also a certain wicked glee – that she never carried the whole bulky conference program around with her, as everyone else did, but always tore out the pages for whichever day it was, and left the rest of the program behind in her room. Now, while she was telling me this, she was watching me closely, because 1) she counted on my being slightly scandalized by her tearing out the pages of a book, even if it was only the MLA conference program – and indeed I was, a little; and 2) she was inordinately pleased with her own ingenuity, iconoclasm, and no-nonsense practicality. That was Emma: resourceful, unsentimental, and just a little mischievous. Our Emma.

Brian McHale
The Ohio State University   

Dear Paul,
Emma was one of the kindest and most helpful people I have ever met during my 47 years at Washington University. She was (for decades) the back bone of the undergraduate program in the Comparative Literature Program but also the most reliable person in its committee for the recruitment of new graduate students. Her office hours were always flooded by students who wanted to get this or that info, and she had an answer to everything; one could see that the students left her office - that they had entered with their questions and worries - relieved and smiling. As a scholar she was the best person informed about the developments in narratology, and I remember a good number of long telephone conversations I had with her informing me about new articles or books in the field. And her own contributions were widely read and and had a strong impact on the field. We all knew: when it comes to narration you better consult Emma. I remember she once took me along to an MLA session where she delivered a narratological paper, and she was the star of the panel. We are all missing her, and I am so sorry to hear that we cannot even meet for a memorial service in her honor. Thanks for creating this website, and I am looking forward to read the other contributions. All the best wishes in these difficult times, cordially, Mike.

Dr. Emma Kafalenos changed my life. I know for a certainty that I am not the only one who can say as much. As one of her many grateful former graduate students, to imagine a world without Emma is to imagine a world lacking one of my intellectual touchstones; she leaves a significant and permanent gap.

It feels somewhat inaccurate to say I am a “former” student of hers, since I am still actively learning from her work and from her example of what a dedicated teacher-scholar is and does.

She was my first instructor in graduate school, and she quite simply altered the course of my intellectual and professional life forever. After one day in her classroom, my entire outlook had changed; it was like being able to see into the workings of many possible worlds all at once. From the very first “Introduction to Narrative Theory” course I took with Emma to advanced seminars on image/text relations and fictional auto/biographies, her thoughtful, rigorous teaching opened my eyes to the possibilities of the formal analysis of narrative, as well as to the multiplicity of approaches that characterize the study of narrative. Her incisive feedback on my writing throughout graduate school has made me a better, clearer writer and thinker to this day. Seeing “Excellent” written in the margins of an essay submitted to Dr. Kafalenos was a rare pleasure, and one worth striving for.

Indeed, in the years since I completed my final graduate seminar with Emma, I know I have created my own “Inferred Emma” (as it were)—an inner voice that attempts to answer the question “What would Emma think?”; it is a question I tend to pose to myself about nearly everything I teach and write. My “Inferred Emma” must, of course, fall short of its model; if it is half as discerning in matters of scholarship and professionalism, I’ll consider myself fortunate. My memories of countless conversations with Emma inform this constructed inner sensibility; I picture her varied and telling reactions. If a question or an idea struck her as worth pursuing, Emma’s eyes would sparkle, the corner of her mouth would turn up; she would nod and give her signature chuckle—that’s always when I knew I was on to something.  

Her dedication to the intellectual and professional development of her students still astounds me. The time and effort she expended for what she believed to be our greatest benefit is just one of the many reasons I admire her so deeply. I hope to be able to give half as generously to my own students.

One lesson that I share with my students direct from Emma’s teaching is her belief (as I understood it) that all acts of scholarship and teaching form a part of a vibrant, living intellectual community made up of mutually respecting colleagues. She encouraged her students to test out new ideas, to push on premises and conclusions in the theories that we read. But such intellectual explorations must always be conducted—Emma insisted—with due deference to one’s own sources of inspiration, and with a marked awareness of the real human minds with whom one was in conversation, albeit at some remove. Texts of scholarship were personal to her, it seems to me, because they were the result of the intellectual labor of real people whom she valued as such.

Emma’s kindness manifested in so many ways, including ways that reached well beyond her intellectual generosity. In a place of honor at my wedding—which was conducted in our home with only our parents and siblings present—there was a beautiful arrangement of fragrant flowers: a thoughtful surprise from Emma. When my children were born, I looked forward to sharing the news and their pictures with Emma, and her delight at receiving the photos and “seeing” them added to my own. I recently had the pleasure of teaching a piece of Emma’s scholarship in an undergraduate course on narrative theory; discussing the students’ responses over email with Emma was both a pleasure and a helpful pedagogical exercise to me, thanks to her ever-incisive questions and reflections. I feel fortunate that in the years to come I will be able to go on teaching her work to students. I look forward to helping them struggle with the advanced ideas, and seeing their excitement grow as they settle into her rigorous ways of thinking and reasoning; I will look for a similar sparkle in their eyes as they start to grasp the illumination her words offer.

Long beyond my time in graduate school, and far beyond the boundaries of the professional realm, Emma has changed my life. My hope, and my expectation, is that Emma’s brilliance, her generosity, and her rigorously high standards will continue to inspire many minds, as I know they will mine. I remember her, I miss her, and I celebrate her legacy with deep gratitude and appreciation.

Several things about our mom stand out. She set goals, pursued them, and made adjustments as needed. She taught me—through example, and sometimes just the right words—the value of working towards goals, both short- and long-term. She was really the main person who helped me learn how to think logically, not unlike some of what her former students remember, though for me this was less about literature and narrative theory. (I of course got some exposure to these topics, too, but I think they stuck better with my brother than with me…). She helped me develop a sense of what is important in life, and a sense of purpose. Although we had different professional and career interests, we were similar in our appreciation of and interest in foreign languages and cultures. She always encouraged me to pursue these and other interests, even when it might have initially seemed to others less than practical. I am really grateful for her understanding and encouragement to try new things and at times take the more difficult path.

Mom was always a teacher, sometimes telling us things, but also listening and providing the right comment at the right time. It’s one of the things I will treasure the most; I can remember numerous times sharing some difficulty or concern, and she would know the right thing to say without trying to decide it for me.

Mom was pretty much both mom and dad for me and my brother Paul. I have early memories of her playing catch with me in the back yard by the red bud tree, learning to bake chocolate chip cookies and bread (while practicing fractions), and before that reading together on the couch each night. She also took us on a fishing trip to Arkansas, made sure we had the chance to learn to ride horses as she had, and also made sure we learned to drive stick. I imagine the last task was a little terrifying with Paul, so when it came my turn, she asked someone else—a Wash U colleague who understood the rhythm of driving—to do the teaching. For Paul and me, some of our earliest memories are of Washington U., including hanging out in the offices that housed Comp Lit, visiting Holmes Lounge for the iced chocolates, and shooting off rockets in the parking lot near Skinker. Mom’s Wash U. colleagues and friends were among the most influential adults for us when we were young, and we were/are very lucky for it. 

   My mother was the most influential person in my life. She gave me life and did her best to raise me and educate me. She had very high expectations for me, some of which were met, in that she expected me to push myself the way that she pushed herself.
   My earliest memory is of my mother and father cleaning up after a small dinner party while I napped on the couch. This was in 1968? They were talking amicably and there was the soothing sound of the dishes and glasses clinking in the sink. I was home and I was safe.
   I remember watching Star Trek on the black and white Zenith TV with my mother and the moon landing too in 1969.
   My parents divorced in 1971. That was a difficult time for everyone involved. My mother was not well prepared to be a single mother. Money was tight and juggling work on her Ph.D. and raising two boys was not easy.
   I remember spending an hour of every morning of summer vacation studying math problems as well as being made to practice the piano year-round.
   I remember my mother comforting me when there was a thunderstorm in 1971? by telling me to think about the wind and the rain and the lightning and the thunder as all part of a grand symphony -- which is how I think about it to this day.
   I remember my mother carpooling us to school in an MGB.
   I remember first playing Dungeons and Dragons with my mother and one of her friends in 1976?
   I remember my mother as a relatively young woman in her thirties excited to entertain her friends and students with a dinner party or games of low stakes poker.
  I remember my mother insisting that we not listen to music in the background. One certainly did not listen to music while eating dinner or while talking. She felt that if one was listening to music that was what one was doing. This applied to most things. If one did a thing one did it as the primary focus -- and as well as it could be done.
   I remember watching the debate between Clinton and Obama in 2008 with my mother and her asking me why I was not a US Senator...
   I remember traveling with my mother to Spain, France, NYC, Vancouver, and elsewhere -- planning our itinerary around museums and restaurants.
   I remember being pleased about a good year at work and my mother pointing out that unless one had horses one was not really successful...
   I remember my mother in the last few months of her life beginning to fade. She must have been in some physical distress but was not one to complain. She was certainly still very certain of much. She knew that she wanted to stay at her condo. She knew that she wanted the freedom to be able to drive her car as she hoped that her health would improve.
   During a hospitalization a month before she passed we were able to say our goodbyes for which I am thankful.
   Rob and his wife Yeonmi were in town for the week of Christmas. Our mother did pretty well for most of the week and clearly enjoyed having us all together very much. I suppose that she willed her way through their visit in that she passed away just a couple of days later.
   She led a full life and enjoyed most of it.
   I will miss her.