Professor Emerita of French
Anne Hyde Greet (Cushing) (1928–2023) was born iin New York City to William Cabell Greet and Katherine Hyde Greet, both English professors who inspired her love of languages. She pursued an extensive higher education in the classics and modern languages, graduating from Bryn Mawr College with a B.A. in Greek (1950). She also earned an M.A. in English from Columbia University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in French from the University of Colorado. During her studies, Anne held a scholarship in Greek at Oxford University, received a Fulbright grant to study at the University of Padua, and completed studies at the Middlebury School of French in Paris and the University for Foreigners in Perugia.
Anne began her teaching career by instructing classics at the Chapin School in New York and teaching French at the University of Colorado. She later joined the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where she taught 19th- and 20th-century French literature and poetry until she retired in 1990. Anne married John Cushing (1893–1984), a Biology Professor at UCSB, in 1965. She built a distinguished scholarly publishing record focused primarily on poetry translation, literary criticism, visual poetry, and original verse. She is best known for her translations of modern French poetry and her pioneering scholarship on livres de peintre (illustrated artists' books). In 1972 she was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.
Anne was widely recognized for her landmark, fully annotated bilingual editions of Guillaume Apollinaire, including Alcools (1965) and Calligrammes (1980), published by the University of California Press, for which she provided extensive commentary on the poet’s avant-garde style and visual poetry, providing what are considered to be definitive English editions of Apollinaire’s visual "picture-poems" that feature extensive critical analysis of his modern graphic poetry layouts. Her research exploring how typography, original prints, and poetic text interlock to create a unique multi-sensory medium paved the way for later scholarship on livres de peintre. Anne was a leading authority on the collaboration between 20th-century avant-garde poets (such as René Char, Paul Éluard, and Apollinaire) and major visual artists (such as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Georges Braque, and Fernand Léger). À Toute Épreuve: A Collaboration Between Artist, Poet, and Publisher (1984) focuses on the landmark 1958 livre de peintre collaboration between poet Paul Éluard, artist Joan Miró, and publisher Gerald Cramer.
Anne also translated poetry and essays by Dada and Surrealist artist Jean Arp, helping bring his French and German literary output to English-speaking readers. Her original poems appeared in The New Yorker, New Statesman and other magazines.
In 1999, Anne donated the Anne Greet Cushing Collection to the UCSB Library’s Department of Special Collections. The collection includes material related to French fine printing, avant-garde books, and artists such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Marc Chagall, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, and the Russian avant-garde artist and publisher Iliazd (Ilia Zdanevich).
In 2005, after the loss of her first husband, Anne married John W. Cotton (1925–2019), a retired UCSB Professor of Psychology and Education.