Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
Source: Migma 62: A Yearbook and Photographic Directory of the Grossmont College Staff. La Mesa, CA: Grossmont Junior College / Monte Vista High School, 1962. np.
Source: La Cumbre Yearbook, Class of 1957. Santa Barbara, CA: UCSB, 1957. p80. Image copyrighted The Regents of the University of California; reprinted with permission, courtesy of the University Archives at UC Santa Barbara.
James Kenton Bell obtained a B.A. in English from the University of Santa Barbara, where he served as the very first student editor for Santa Barbara’s official literary magazine, Spectrum. He subsequently earned his M.A. from U.C. Berkeley and was hired in 1961 as one of the very first staff members of the newly formed Grossmont College English Department. From 1961 until 1964, the College campus operated on the location of the former Monte Vista High School. However, in 1963, by the time the campus officially opened its new facilities to students, Bell had already accepted an offer to join the English faculty at the brand new College of San Mateo.
As soon as Bell settled into his new job, he and colleague Dr. Adrian Alfred Cohn, who also moved his teaching career from San Diego to College of San Mateo, teamed up to author textbooks together from 1963 to 1978. Having gained a degree of critical mass during the mid to late 1960s, College of San Mateo attracted book publishers who aggressively sought out faculty interested in writing new textbooks, and in 1968 Glencoe Press published the first edition of the now iconic Bell and Cohn’s Rhetoric in a Modern Mode. While critical reception of the book was generally favorable, then Grossmont College’s Bob Danielson, who became Department Chair after Bell absconded to San Mateo, gave Rhetoric In a Modern Mode a sternly disappointing review. Criticism notwithstanding, by 1983, Rhetoric in a Modern Mode was carried into its fourth edition. As Adrian Cohn remarked, “So much for Mr. Danielson.”
In addition to their co-authoring Rhetoric In a Modern Mode, Bell and Cohn worked together on a freshman composition anthology, Toward a New America (DC Heath, 1971). The book controversially included fiction and nonfiction works from periodicals such as Playboy, which lead Cohn to a five-day stay at the Playboy Mansion. Although Bell and Cohn's partnership as textbook authors eventually came to an amicable end, James K. Bell did team up with colleague Roberta Reynolds for one final writing project, Before the Bottom Line (1995), then retired from College of San Mateo in 2001 as Professor Emeritus.
Bell was also a long-time acquaintance with San Francisco poet Gene Fowler. In his book, Fires: Selected Poems, 1963-1976, a “bicentennial” collection, Fowler dedicates one of his own works in thanks for Bell's frequent use of Fowler’s poetry in his classes at College of San Mateo.
James Kenton Bell passed away in Arizona in October of 2013.
Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
8800 Grossmont College Drive
El Cajon, California 92020
619-644-7000
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