Dr. Jean R. Brink was born in 1942. Her illustrious career encompassed: San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, visiting assistant professor, 1971-72 and 1973-74; Arizona State University, Tempe, assistant professor, 1974-79, associate professor, 1979-84, professor of English, 1984-, director of Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1981-94; Arizona Humanities Council, member of speakers' bureau; gives workshops for high school teachers. 

Jean R. Brink and Fredi Chiappelli of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at UCLA saw that Arizona needed a center such as his, and they persuaded all three universities and the Arizona Board of Regents to fulfill that need. The Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies was founded under her direction in 1982 and continues to flourish.

Jean ran ACMRS until 1993 with the same audacity and vision with which she first envisioned it. Long before the notion of the global Middle Ages and Renaissance became popular, for example, she recognized its importance and gathered affiliates from Arizona’s three universities who studied non-European cultures of the period. And long before AI became a household acronym, she published a book on the subject: “Computers and the Brain: Perspectives on Human and Artificial Intelligence” (1989). 

Jean was a woman for all seasons; she gave great gifts to medieval and Renaissance studies; and in her publications and the center she established, “mon mæg giet gesion hire swæð” (one can still see her track), to paraphrase King Alfred the Great. That track is even broader and more variously adorned in the hearts of friends and family (2 sons) whom she leaves behind.