Ransford C. Pyle
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Ransford C. Pyle
Associate Professor
HPA 324 - (407) 823-2687 or 2603
pyle@mail.ucf.edu I prefer email

Education:

• A.B., Harvard University (See me as dashing Harvard senior)
  A.B. stands for Ars Bacheloris, my diploma was in Latin, which I could read at the time, but after decades among the Phillistines, it is no longer comprehensible.
  My major was Fine Arts, otherwise known as Art History. I studied it because I liked it. My favorite period was French Baroque, favorite painters, Vermeer (OK, he's not French Baroque), Watteau, and Fragonard. To my credit, I got to see the Van Gogh show in D.C. last fall (actually a friend got the tickets by applying months in advance). I see there is a Jackson Pollack retrospective - I passed on that one - hate to see artists drooling on canvas.
• J.D., University of Florida
  
J.D. stands for Juris Doctor, although diploma was in English. This is the standard degree given for the study of law. I call this part of my education the "boring period." I attended UF in the "old" law school on 13th and University Avenue, then a power center, now the law school looks and feels like one of le Corbusier's nightmares. While I fell asleep countless times in the old library, the new one is much too uncomfortable for sleeping. The trees outside are quite nice, however, and I think I would spend even less time in the library than I did back then. Tuition: $900 (seven trimesters); Rent: $65 per month (utilities included, of course); Gasoline: $5 per month (lived a block from the law school); Food: $1.05 for three-piece chicken dinner at Louie's two blocks away. Eat your hearts out! Although if I had come out of law school owing 50K in student loans like many of my students, I would have been forced to go out and make a living instead of going into anthropology (below) and then becoming a teacher. I might be rich!
• M.A., University of Florida
  With this even the name of the degree is English. My Master of Arts was in anthropology. I wrote what seemed at the time an extreme long (130 pages) thesis on law and anthropology. This was the fun part of my education. They fool you into thinking studying for the Ph.D. will be more fun. No, the fun is over.
• Ph.D., University of Florida
  They kept paying me to go to school (this was back in the good old days when the people who weren't at war were having a really good time celebrating being civilians, although they thought they were protesting the War. Fortunately I had already done the Army thing during peacetime and therefore could share in the festivities without the guilt that others felt.) I studied more anthropology but it got really nasty toward the end. When I did my oral defense of dissertation, my committee was so cruel I suddenly realized they hated me. Then I found out they had planned a party afterward. Good thing I did walk away when they sent me out of the room like I had half a mind to. Since we don't have a Ph.D. program in Legal Studies, I've never been able to practice the sadistic interrogation of my mentors, but occasionally I get to sit in on an honors candidate's defense and throw a few knives.

Served in the US Army where I was in Military Intelligence (please don't say "that's an oxymoron"), studied Japanese, in which I am now about as good as I am in Latin (I can still say "Kirin biiru, Kudasai.").

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*Zorba's answer: "Am I not a man, and is not a man stupid. I am married. Wife, Children, the whole catastrophe!"

The Only girl who never let me down
CENTER: One of my "prettier" watercolors, "tweaked" a bit in Photoshop		Pyle doing hard time (Old goatee disguise) by Cal Warlick

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Rance's Fancies
NEW (June 26, 2000) A gallery of my favorite
John Singer Sargent paintings(reload/refresh to see different paintings)

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• Deauville
• La Spezia
• Buenos Aires
• Daughter Justine
• Daughter Tess (as mermaid, Barbados)
• My Book, The Book, Foundations of Law
  Don't forget to click on the picture.

Tell me about yourself! pyle@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu

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