Department History

Charlton Coney Jernigan

(Pine Needles yearbook, 1935)

(Pine Needles yearbook, 1939)

(Image from Queens University)

Charlton Jernigan earned his B.A. (1925), M.A. (1926) and Ph.D. (1935) degrees from Duke University, as well as doing graduate work in English, Greek and Latin at the University of Chicago. He taught at both Duke and the University of Chicago, and served as head of the departments of Greek and English at Rutherford College before coming to The Woman’s College in 1935 as an Assistant Professor and Head of the newly renamed Department of Classical Civilization.  In the same year his dissertation on “Comic Incongruity in the Eleven Plays of Aristophanes” was published.  After teaching at The Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina until 1949, he served as the 11th President of Queens College in Charlotte from 1951-1953 when he died.