Asa Clinton Crowell

Asa Clinton Crowell (1862-1936), professor of Germanic languages and literature, was born in Pawtucket on May 20, 1862. He prepared for college at the University Grammar School and graduated from Brown in 1882. He received his A.M. degree from Brown in 1889, and his Ph.D. in 1894. He was principal of the high school at Milston Mills, New Hampshire, and teacher of Latin and French at Dummer Academy in South Byfield, Massachusetts, before returning to Brown as instructor in French in 1890. He was instructor in French and German in 1891-92, and instructor in German from 1892 to 1894. He was appointed assistant professor of Germanic languages and literature in 1894, and promoted to associate professor in 1901. On October 1, 1891 he was the first instructor to teach a class of women students at the University. The women had been admitted to examinations only and the means of their instruction had been personally arranged by President E. Benjamin Andrews, who attended their historic first class in French with Crowell. In 1898 the alumnae of the Women’s College established the Asa Clinton Crowell premiums in German to be awarded to at least two members of the entering class of the Women’s College. During the 42 years that he taught at Brown, his courses included his special interests in Scandinavian literature, German mythology, Gothic, Old Icelandic, and the dramas of Lessing and Schiller. During the first World War he taught French at Fort Adams in Newport. He retired in 1932 and died in Providence on June 26, 1936. His writings included a translation of Mortenson’s Handbook of Norse Mythology in 1913, translations of old Dutch letters in Narratives of the New Netherlands in 1909, and Lessons in Old Icelandic in 1911.