William Compaine Calin (April 4, 1936, in Newington, Connecticut – May 20, 2018, in Lake City, Florida) was a senior scholar of Medieval French literature and French poetry at the University of Florida. His work has focused on Occitan Studies and on Franco-British literary relations.
Calin was educated at Yale College (A.B. 1957) and received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1960. He was an instructor (1960–1962) and an assistant professor (1962–1963) at Dartmouth College; assistant professor (1969-1965), associate professor (1965–1970), and professor (1970–1973) at Stanford University; head of the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Oregon (1973–1988), visiting professor (1982) and exchange professor (1984) at the Université de Poitiers, and Edward Arnold Visiting Professor (1987) at Whitman College. Since 1988, he has served as graduate research professor (from 1998 to 2001 as Florida Foundation Research Professor) at the University of Florida.
Calin has served on the editorial advisory boards of the journals Olifant, Tenso, Studies in Medievalism, Escrituras, and Medievally Speaking, and was guest editor for a special issue of L’Ésprit Créateur on “The Future of Old French Studies.” His grants and honors include a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1963–64) as well as grants from the American Council of Learned Societies (1963–1964; 1968; 1996–1997), the American Philosophical Society (1970), the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (1981), the Fulbright Commission (1982), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (1984–1985, 1987–1988).
Calin's publications span topics from nine centuries and the literary and linguistic traditions of hegemonic France as well as the minority literatures of Scots, Breton, and Occitan. He has also been a supporter and proponent of Leslie J. Workman’s Medievalism Studies,[1] serving on the advisory board of Studies in Medievalism[2] and publishing on the reception of medieval culture in postmedieval times.[3] In 2011, on the occasion of his 75th birthday, Calin was recognized by a conference section ("Makers of the Middle Ages: Papers in Honor of William Calin") at the 46th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University. During the session, he was presented with a Festschrift, Cahier Calin: Makers of the Middle Ages. Essays in Honor of William Calin, to which 20 of his friends and colleagues contributed short essays.[4]
Calin has also published more than 110 journal articles and book chapters.