In Memoriam: Tribute

TAKE FIVE: Homerin was a champion of the program and of learning for its own sake. (J. Adam Fenster/University of Rochester)

Professor of Religion Th. Emil Homerin “was at the top of his game” when he died in December, said his longtime colleague, Douglas Brooks, a professor of religion at Rochester who first met Homerin at an academic conference nearly 40 years ago. Homerin’s death came shortly after a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

A scholar of Arabic literature and Islam and a formidable translator of Arabic and Sufi poetry, Homerin joined the University’s religion and classics department in 1988. Promoted to full professor in 2000, he was a popular undergraduate teacher, known especially for his course Speaking Stones, which grew out of his research on the mystical poet Umar Ibn al-Farid. The research took him to Cairo’s al-Qarafah cemetery, where his fieldwork led him to a focus on death and the afterlife. Speaking Stones included visits to Rochester’s historic Mount Hope Cemetery, where students explored art, symbolism, and religion as a way to illuminate customs and symbolic connections between the living and the dead.

Last year, as the COVID-19 pandemic was placing additional demands on faculty members, Homerin agreed to supervise an independent study on mysticism for Juliana South ’22. “I can’t believe the amount of work he put into teaching one person,” South says.

Born Thomas Emil Homerin in Pekin, Illinois, Homerin was what his childhood friend, artist and art historian Mark Staff Brandl, called a “blue-collar scholar,” who always rode the bus to work and brought a lunch from home. Homerin graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree before completing his doctorate at the University of Chicago. It was at college that he met his wife, Nora Walters, and when he began going by his middle name, Emil. The couple had two sons together, Luke and Elias.

The author of seven books; one edited volume; and numerous articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries, Homerin published his most recent book, Aisha al-Ba’uniyya: A Life in Praise of Love (Makers of the Muslim World), in 2019. At the time of his death, he and Matthew Brown, a professor of music theory at the Eastman School of Music, had just signed a contract with Indiana University Press for a forthcoming book, Ariane & Bluebeard: From Fairy Tale to Comic Book Opera.

The project demonstrated the breadth of Homerin’s interests. Brown and Homerin had met at a 2012 event celebrating the release of books authored by University faculty. Brown promoted a performance of Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande and mentioned the ensemble’s use of images by the comics artist P. Craig Russell. This thrilled Homerin, who happened to be a comic book aficionado, Brown recalls. The serendipitous meeting led to a friendship and multiple collaborations.

Homerin’s dedication to undergraduate education made him a valuable asset to the College’s signature Take Five Scholars Program. As a member of the program’s review board for more than 25 years, “he always brought enthusiasm and curiosity to the review process,” says program coordinator J. B. Rogers. “He was somebody who really believed in our core tenets, which are essentially the idea of learning for learning’s sake, pursuing things for the purpose of academic enrichment, and celebrating the classical liberal arts education. He embodied all those things.”

—Jeanette Colby