Keith Waldrop

Bernard Keith Waldrop was born in Emporia, Kansas, to Arthur Waldrop, a railroad worker, and Opal (née Mohler), a piano teacher. He received his bachelor's degree from the Kansas State Teachers College (now Emporia State University) and his M.A. and Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Michigan (1958, 1964).

From 1953 to 1955, he served in the United States Army. He was stationed in West Germany, where he met Rosmarie Sebald. She emigrated to the United States and they were married in 1959.

Academic career

From 1963 to 1964, while finishing his Ph.D., Waldrop worked as an instructor at Wayne State University, following which he was hired as a visiting assistant professor at Wesleyan University, where he taught between 1966 and 1967. He was hired as a professor of English by Brown University in 1968, where he taught for the remainder of his career for both the English and Literary Arts departments. After forty-three years of teaching he retired in 2011.