We recently learned about the passing of Dr. James (Jim) Armagost (1941-2023), faculty emeritus in Speech who had an active presence in our English Department for many years before his retirement in 2000.
A professor of Linguistics, Jim taught introductory and advanced courses in the field during his 27 years at K-State for his home department of Speech Communication, Theatre, and Dance (now arranged into the School of Media and Communication and the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance) as well as the Department of English and the Department of Modern Languages.
In English, course descriptions for Fall 1978 (our earliest at hand in our paper archives) show Jim offering two 700-level courses that semester: “Introduction to Linguistics” and a special topics course on “Decipherment,” which provided “consideration of the nature of writing, how and where it began, and what kinds of changes have occurred up to the present.”
ENGL 601 “General Phonetics” is a recurring favorite, appearing once — and sometimes even twice — a year across the 1980s and 1990s, and, in Fall 1996, alongside ENGL 600 “Principles of Linguistics.”
In his last semester of teaching in Spring 2000, just before retirement, Jim taught a special topics course with the intriguing title “Linguistic Science Fiction.”
Alas, no detailed course description appears in our files for this final offering. What we can find, however, thanks to the digital archives of K-State Libraries, is evidence of Jim’s mentorship of MA students in Speech, Modern Languages, and English as they completed their theses and final projects and they share their thanks in the “Acknowledgements.”
Jim’s work with students, alongside his contributions to preserving Native American languages and his co-authored Comanche dictionary, speak to his lasting legacy as a teacher and a scholar.
Though we’re sad to lose Jim, we’re fortunate to have faculty in English like Mary Kohn, Professor and Director of the Chapman Center, who continue important and award-winning work with language and diversity into the 21st century.
— Karin Westman, Department Head
K-State English 