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Eugene Hannes Falk, professor for nearly 20 years at the University and
recipient of a prestigious scholarly award from the French government, died
Aug. 30 of complications of prostate cancer. A Chapel Hill resident, he was
87.
Falk was a professor of French and comparative literature from his arrival at
Carolina in 1967 until he retired in 1986. He was awarded an endowed
professorship in 1972 and won the French Order of Palmes Academiques in 1979.
The award, given to French citizens and a handful of U.S. teachers, honors
excellence in education. A French official bestowing the award called Falk a
good teacher who tried to improve quality of life at the university and was "a
scholar of international repute."
Falk's books included Renunciation as a Tragic Focus (1954), Types of Thematic
Structure (1967) and The Literary Theory of Roman Ingarden (1975). He
specialized in western and eastern European literature of the 19th and 20th
centuries.
A native of the former Slovakia, Falk studied at German University in Prague
and the Sorbonne in Paris. He graduated from Charles University in Prague and
earned his doctorate in 1942 from the University of Manchester in England. He
became a U.S. citizen in 1952.
He earned a research fellowship at the National Humanities Center in the
Research Triangle Park and a Fulbright Fellowship to teach methods of
comparative literature and the poetics of philosopher Roman Ingarden at the
University Federal de Minas Gerais in Brazil.
At Carolina, Falk served on the Faculty Council and numerous committees. He was
a director of graduate studies in French and comparative literature and chaired
the comparative literature curriculum.
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