In Memoriam: Amy Judith Apfel Kass, 1940-2015

Amy Kass, senior lecturer emerita in the humanities at the University of Chicago, died on August 19 at her home in Washington, D.C. She was 74 years old and had suffered from ovarian cancer and leukemia.

Kass grew up in New York City and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1962. She then took a teaching job in the Lincoln-Sudbury School District in suburban Boston. During the summer of 1965, Kass and her husband Leon traveled to Mississippi to register Black voters.

Amy Kass joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1976. Her husband, Leon, also taught at the university and currently is the Addie Clark Harding Professor Emeritus of Social Thought. Amy and Leon Kass were co-editors of Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying (University of Notre Dame Press, 2000). Based on their research for the book, they developed a course at the University of Chicago, which they co-taught, entitled “Ethics of Everyday Life: Courtship.”

Amy Kass retired in 2010, after teaching for 34 years at the university.