Richard Middleton-Kaplan

Prior to joining Whitman’s Academic Resource Center, Richard Middleton-Kaplan served from 2015 to 2022 at Walla Walla Community College as Dean of Arts & Sciences, Criminal Justice, Education, and Human & Social Services.

Raised in Los Angeles, Richard earned his BA, MA, and PhD in English from UCLA. Working his way through school, Richard had jobs including butcher’s apprentice, shoe salesman, furniture mover, art framer, stock clerk, temp receptionist and temp secretary, courier, chauffeur, nursery and pet supply clerk, medical and legal transcriptionist, coach on phone technique to cold-call stockbrokers, and psychic for a day on the Psychic Hotline.

A Junior Year Abroad at The University of York in England was followed thirty years later by a return to York as visiting scholar at the university’s Centre for Applied Human Rights, where Richard helped to develop a course on literature and human rights.

Richard first came to Walla Walla as a sabbatical replacement instructor in English at Whitman in 1991-1992. He then worked for Coffey Communications, the medical publisher in Walla Walla, as Senior Staff Editor from 1993 to 2002.

Moving to Chicago in 2002, Richard returned to teaching at Harper College in the northwest suburbs. From 2002 until his return to Walla Walla in 2015, Richard taught as Professor of English & Humanities, co-founded a faculty professional development center, and was appointed Distinguished Chair for Teaching Excellence.  

Richard lives with his wife Marcia and cat Harriet. His community activities include serving on the board of the Walla Walla Symphony and on the 2024-2025 roster of the Humanities Washington Speakers Bureau (topic: “Honoring Women Peacebuilders in Africa and Beyond”).

Richard’s publications include articles in Modern Fiction Studies, Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, and Peace Research. Book chapters appear in Comparative Romanticisms, Encyclopedia of Beat Literature, Jewish Resistance against the Nazis, Levinas and Twentieth-Century Literature, and the Palgrave Handbook of Holocaust Literature and Culture.