Emeritus Professor of History Janelle Greenberg, well-known for her highly valued undergraduate teaching and highly readable research into the origins of early modern British thinking, died June 6, 2023.
“She was just a tremendous teacher and a really talented researcher as well,” recalled George Reid Andrews, Distinguished Professor of History, who noted Greenberg’s rare distinction of moving from part-time to full-time in the department, and becoming only the department’s second female full professor.
Greenberg was honored with one of the first Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Awards in 1989.
“She was able to take these pretty dry topics and get students engrossed in them in the classroom,” he said, adding that her research into the origins of British Constitutionalism uncovered the Medieval roots of British thinking about how to give subjects powers to protect themselves from over-reaching by the monarchy.
He recalled substituting in Greenberg’s classroom at times when she had to attend a conference, and presenting a lecture she had prepared. He would pause to ask students about certain terms in the lecture, and witnessed the enthusiastic debates this engendered.
“It was some of the most lovely class discussion I had ever led on something I knew nothing about,” he said.
Andrews was chair when Greenberg came up for promotion and knew he’d also need to read her latest book, which was “The Radical Face of the Ancient Constitution: St Edward’s ‘Laws’ in Early Modern Political Thought.” “I could see this was exactly what she was doing in her classes,” he observed — explaining very complicated history in engaging ways.
Greenberg taught in the department for more than 40 years, and Professor Emeritus William Chase was her colleague and friend for the last 39 of them. “She had a really good sense of humor and a deep sense of humanity,” he said. “She was less impressed by the number of articles and books the person could publish than their quality as a colleague. How do you treat students and treat fellow faculty members? Those things were very important to Janelle.
“I learned a lot from watching her, the way she reacted to students and treated them,” he added.
Liann Tsoukas became a colleague in 2000. “She instantly reached out to me and served immediately in the department both as a role model and a mentor. She didn’t have an ounce of pretension or superiority. That’s just not how she carried herself.
“She always graded her own material. She just humanized the classroom for undergraduates. She was very perceptive about how people learn and how people live their lives. That definitely was a model for me.
“She had this great whimsical sense of humor,” Tsoukas continued. “She would say, ‘Sometimes if I feel like I am losing the students I will tell a wacky story about the past.’ Those students felt seen and heard and known in her classrooms.
Twenty-year departmental colleague Bruce Venarde recalled Greenberg as “a force of nature, but unlike many forces of nature she was a lot of fun to be with, because she was hilarious. She was just extraordinary: an outstanding historian, an outstanding and at this time just legendary teacher and an outstanding colleague.
“She was a wonderful mentor to me when I entered the department, in fact throughout my time at Pitt, and a very generous mentor to other new arrivals in the department.”
He recalled her generosity to the office staff, whom she invited to lunch every month or two. Grace Tomcho, the office’s administrator for 35 years, now retired, remembered those occasions well. When asked if she were coming along to those staff lunches, Greenberg would say, “No, no, I just want you girls to go to lunch and you talk about all of us,” Tomcho said.
“She was very caring,” Tomcho added. “She was a bright light in the department. She always watched over the staff. If anyone gave the staff any type of problems, she was there. She always came in with a smile and always asked how we were doing.”
Janelle Greenberg was born on April 3, 1938 in Muskogee, Okla. She graduated from Stillwater High School as a music major in 1956. She attended the University of Houston on a band scholarship but eventually turned to the study of history, receiving her bachelor’s degree in 1960. She then completed her master’s thesis in English history in 1963 under Corinne Weston, later her co-author for “Subjects and Sovereigns” from Cambridge University Press. Greenberg earned her Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan in 1970.
She joined Pitt as a part-time lecturer in 1973 and was promoted to part-time assistant professor (1978-1989), gaining full-time status and tenure and then becoming a full professor in 2001.
Greenberg served as a thesis advisor for many students in history and in the Honors College. In a video on Pitt’s YouTube channel about Greenberg’s teaching, she says: “It’s so invigorating, it’s so exciting, teaching these people this stuff that is going to make them, I honestly believe, better human beings and certainly better citizens, better able to participate in our democracy, and I love that — I just love it.”
She is survived by her husband of 62 years, Martin; three children, Joshua, Rebecca and Steven (Beth); three grandchildren, Arella, Ezra and Pearl; a brother, David (Jenny); a sister, Nancy (Breck); a brother-in-law, Howard; nieces Joyce and Lisa, and other relatives.
— Marty Levine