Kenyon College is a private liberal arts college founded in Gambier, Ohio in 1824, by Episcopal Bishop Philander Chase. It is considered to be among the most prestigious and selective in the nation and is Ohio's oldest private institute of higher learning. Originally an all-male institution, Kenyon became co-educational in 1969. Kenyon remains loosely affliated with the Episcopal Church. The 2004 Princeton Review and Fiske Guide to Colleges 2004 both ranked Kenyon's admissions as "most selective" and the college received top academic ratings.

The campus is noted for its Gothic architecture and rustic setting. Although suffering two serious fires (after which it was rebuilt), Old Kenyon Hall (1827) is believed to be the first Gothic revival building in North America.

Kenyon's English Department is well known among the college's academic departments. The English department first gained international recognition with the arrival of the poet and critic John Crowe Ransom in 1937 as Professor of Poetry and first editor of The Kenyon Review, a renowned literary journal. Perhaps the department's greatest influence on American literature derives from the central role that it played in the development of a theory of literary study known as "the New Criticism." At a time when many scholars and teachers focused on the historical backgrounds of a literary text or probed authors' biographies for psychological clues, Ransom and his contemporaries argued for a method of literary analysis which took literature to be the most significant way humanity has ever devised for exploring reality, and which took texts themselves with corresponding seriousness, reading them closely and interpreting them intensively. Besides John Crowe Ransom, notable English faculty have included Jacques Barzun, Elizabeth Bishop, Eric Bentley, Cleanth Brooks, William Empson, Alfred Kazin , Robert Lowell, Arthur Mizener , Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Yvor Winters, and more recently, John Kinsella and James Wood. Former English students at Kenyon include poets Robert Lowell, Randall Jarrell, Robert Mezey and Anthony Hecht, biographer and poet Daniel Mark Epstein, playwright Wendy MacLeod, and authors Peter Taylor, Fred Waitzkin, P. F. Kluge, James Wright, William Gass, Laura Hillenbrand, and E. L. Doctorow.

Kenyon's sports teams are referred to as the Lords and Ladies, and their colors are purple and white, with gold often added as an accent. The college's men's and women's swimming teams are generally considered among the best in NCAA Division III, with the men's team winning 26 consecutive national championships and the women's 20 (not consecutively). Swim Coach Jim Steen is the winningest coach in any sport in NCAA history. Kenyon's football team, however, is traditionally one of the worst in NCAA Division III.

Kenyon College is a member of the Five Colleges of Ohio, Great Lakes Colleges Association, and the Association of Episcopal Colleges.

Notable alumni

• Nick Bakay,television personality
• Jim Bellows, legendary journalist and newspaper editor
• Jim Borgman, political cartoonist
• Jay Cocks, film critic
• Adam Davidson , Academy Award winning director
• David Davis, Senator, United States Supreme Court Justice
• Rolla Dyer, developer of the typhus-vaccine, and director of the National Institutes of Health
• Carl Djerassi, the creator of the birth control pill, winner of the National Medal of Science in 1973
• Alfred Granger , architect
• Graham Gund, architect
• Rutherford B. Hayes, former President of the United States
• Allison Janney, actress, four-time winner of the Emmy Award for work on The West Wing
• Paul Newman, actor, winner of the Emmy Award, winner of the Academy Award
• Kris Osborn , CNN anchor
• Olof Palme, former Prime Minister of Sweden
• Alfred Humphreys Pease, composer
• Coles Phillips, artist
• William Rehnquist (attended one year), Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
• Mark Rosenthal , MTV president
• Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War during the Lincoln administration
• Bill Watterson, cartoonist, best known for Calvin and Hobbes
• Jonathan Winters, actor and comedian
• Victoria Wyatt, art historian

External links

1. Kenyon College: http://www.kenyon.edu
2. Kenyon Collegian (student newspaper): http://collegian.kenyon.edu
3. Five Colleges of Ohio: http://www.ohio5.org
4. Great Lakes Colleges Association: http://www.glca.org
5. Colleges and Universities of the Anglican Communion/Association of Episcopal Colleges: http://www.cuac.org/53810_43981_ENG_HTM.htm?menupage=53912