Professor peter saccio biography

Peter Churchill Saccio

May 28, 1941 – August 19, 2024

Born in 1941 in Brooklyn, New York, he grew up in Bethlehem, Connecticut. He prepared for Yale at St. Marks. He discovered his love of Shakespeare as a child, and planned to pursue a career in drama, setting his sights on scholarship.

At Yale he lived in Silliman, was an honors major in Philosophy, and ranking scholar.

Peter saccio

He held the General Motors Scholarship and was active in the Dramat, serving as member-at-large and secretary. He also appeared on stage, most memorably in the spring of 1960 as an unctuous and whiny Blifil in the original musical, “Tom Jones.” He earned a PhD in English from Princeton University, where he held Woodrow Wilson and Jacobus fellowships.

After joining the Dartmouth faculty in 1966, Saccio primarily taught Shakespeare and modern British drama.

He served as vice chair and chair of the Department of English, and was successively given two endowed chairs at Dartmouth, the Willard Professorship in Orator