Rosanne G. Potter
Died at Home On Friday, August 29
Rosanne was born in Elizabeth, NJ, on October 4, 1941, the only child of Harry Giuditta, a banker, and Bernice Powers Giuditta. She graduated from Holy Trinity School in Westfield (1959) and from Rosemont College in Rosemont, Pennsylvania (1963). In May 1962, during a junior year abroad in Vienna, Austria, she suffered the loss of a leg in a streetcar accident. Determined not to allow invalidism to change her life, after her recovery she earned a Master’s degree at the University of Chicago (1965) and a doctorate in English at the University of Texas (1975). She taught English and Women’s Studies at Iowa State University, attaining the rank of Full Professor in 1994. In her academic career, Rosanne helped to create the field of computer-assisted study of literary texts. She edited a collection of essays, ‘Literary Computing and Literary Criticism’ (1989).
In retirement, Rosanne divided her time between Westfield and Key West, Florida. She was active in Key West and national institutions, becoming President of the Friends of the Key West Library and of the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. In retirement also, Rosanne pursued artistic and literary interests. She studied poetry-writing with Renee Ashley at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She published poems in numerous chapbooks and anthologies, notably the Paterson Literary Review and The Charleston Magazine, a British publication devoted to writing about Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group. Rosanne gathered many of her poems in two collections illustrated by her own paintings: ‘Key West: Transit of Venus’ (2005) and ‘Two Arts’ (2022). Her last work, unfinished at her death, was a memoir of her accident in Vienna and its aftermath. Part of an early version of it was published in a feminist journal, ‘Sistersong.’ In Key West Rosanne studied painting with an Abstract Expressionist painter and former Westfield resident, Joe Loeber. Her study of painting was a return to work undertaken with Clarence Giese during her junior year in Vienna. Rosanne painted prolifically, exhibiting in galleries in Union, NJ, New York City, Key West and Paris, and winning awards in online competitions. Her paintings hang in private collections in Toulouse (France), Salzburg (Austria), and Rio de Janeiro. Many of her works can be seen on her website, ‘Rosanne Potter’s Work.’
Rosanne was married twice: in 1965 to Norman Potter, a political exile from the military government in Brazil, with whom she lived for several years in Heidelberg, Germany; and then (1984) to William McCarthy, her colleague at Iowa State University and a biographer and editor. With Norman Potter she had a son, Anthony Miles Potter. She was stepmother to McCarthy’s two children by a previous marriage. She is survived by her son and the writer of this obituary.
