In Memoriam · 1950–2025

Memorial Minute for Timothy Baker Shutt

By Katherine Elkins

Submitted February 15, 2026, for inclusion in Kenyon’s faculty meeting minutes.

Timothy Baker Shutt’s voice was everywhere at Kenyon: filling Philo Hall during his legendary Dante course, where students sat in windowsills because every seat was taken, carrying across the football field on a fall Saturday, and echoing through the natatorium at swim meets. He led ghost tours and star-gazing nights, and for thirty-five years, his voice was one of the defining sounds of this place. Any attempt to capture the fullness of who he was must fall short, but we can gesture toward what made him so central to our community.

Born in Newark, Ohio in 1950, Tim Shutt was an All-American swimmer at Hotchkiss and earned his B.A. from Yale in 1972. He completed his doctorate in medieval literature and the history of ideas at the University of Virginia, where he was a du Pont Fellow and Mellon Post-Doctoral Research Fellow. He came to Kenyon in 1986 and taught here until his retirement in 2021. He died on November 9, 2025, at the age of seventy-five and is survived by his mother, Lucy Baker Shutt; his daughter, Pruitt McCoy; stepdaughter, Doub Hanshaw; stepson, Whitt Hanshaw; siblings Anne Trahan and Robert Shutt; and five grandsons. He was preceded in death by his wife, Leslie; his father, Jack; and his brother, Michael.

No teacher at Kenyon has been more honored. He won the Trustee Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1993 and, remarkably, was awarded the Senior Cup five times by the graduating class for contributing the most to the college. He was also named one of Princeton Review’s Best 300 Professors. Students made t-shirts for the Integrated Program in Humane Studies that read “It’s the Shutt,” a play on words that captured both his centrality and how much he was loved.

His teaching spanned the entire sweep of the history of ideas, from Homer and the Hebrew Bible through Dante and Chaucer to the Romantics. Tim was drawn to what he called the “fruitful tensions” of the ancient world, between individual excellence and collective purpose, between conviction and openness to other voices. For him, these were never abstract questions. It was “the Shutt,” and his brilliance was unmistakable, but Tim made sure it was never only his. As Director of IPHS for many years, he took his colleagues’ ideas as seriously as his own and followed conversations wherever they led. A conversation with Tim was always wide-ranging, always enlightening, and could continue over days and even weeks. For those of us who co-taught with him, it lasted decades. This reach extended over both time and distance, far beyond Gambier through his popular Modern Scholar lecture series, including the widely acclaimed “Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans” course.

Many who knew Tim remember most vividly his joy. His booming laughter filled rooms, and his genuine warmth drew people in. Alumni who returned to campus would make their way to Timberlake House and up the narrow staircase to his office seeking him out, even after decades. His conviction that all wisdom led to the vision of love, exemplified in his most beloved author, Dante, was central to his teaching and mentorship of his many hundreds of students, who returned this love in equal measure.

Tim’s voice is gone now, but it lives on in the questions we learned to ask and the conversations we continue. Let us spend this minute in silence, reflecting on our own memories of Timothy Baker Shutt.