John Sotter Kolsti

John Kolsti, 86, professor emeritus of Slavic languages and literatures at the University of Texas at Austin and loving husband, father and grandfather, passed away Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021. A visitation for John will be held Saturday, Dec. 18, from 1-3 pm at Cook-Walden Chapel of the Hills Funeral Home, 9700 Anderson Mill Road, Austin, Texas. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the Boston Latin School.

John was born Sept. 30, 1935, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Mitchell and Nancy Kolsti. He spent his childhood in Boston and graduated from Boston Latin School. John entered Harvard University in 1956. After earning his bachelor’s degree, he enlisted in the Army, studying at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. John was stationed in Germany as a Russian linguist, serving at the same base as Elvis Presley.

John returned to Harvard after leaving the Army to earn master’s and doctoral degrees. He studied for one year at the University of Belgrade, Serbia.

John married Carol Maxwell, his loving wife, on Dec. 18, 1965, and began teaching in the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies in 1966. He served the university as department chair from 1998-2001. He received the Harry Ransom Teaching Excellence Award and multiple nominations for the Friar’s Centennial Teaching Fellowship and the Jean Holloway Award.

John is the co-editor of “The Gypsies of Eastern Europe” and author of “The Bilingual Singer: A Study in Albanian and Serbo-Croatian Oral Epic Traditions.” He is also contributor to “Wild Songs, Sweet Songs: The Albanian Epic in the Collections of Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord,” which includes translations of songs and ballads that Lord recorded in northern Albania in the 1930s.

After his retirement from UT in 2007, John was inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Teachers, the university’s highest teaching accolade.

John was preceded in death by his parents and brothers, Peter Kolsti and Weston Kolsti. He is survived by his wife, Carol Kolsti of Austin; sons, Kenneth and wife, Nancy, of Trophy Club, Texas; and Kyle and wife, Colleen, of Beavercreek, Ohio; grandchildren, Matthew and Kathleen Kolsti of Beavercreek; nephew, Peter Kolsti of Austin; and many other family members, friends and former students.