Motion to Survive

Motion to Survive traces Joseph Urgo’s understanding of Parkinson’s disease not simply as a diagnosis, but as a revelation that reshapes the meaning of movement across his entire life. While Parkinson’s is commonly associated with tremors and involuntary movement, Urgo focuses equally on dystonia: the freezing and stiffening of the body that traps motion altogether. Looking backward through this “Parkinsonian lens,” he recognizes a lifelong fear of becoming stuck—emotionally, professionally, and physically. The disease becomes a metaphor through which he reinterprets his past and examines the forces that drove his restless pursuit of change.

Spanning childhood memories and a forty-year academic career at eight institutions, where he served as professor, department chair, dean, provost, and president before retiring to Akron, Ohio, Urgo's life was defined by continual transition: new campuses, new communities, and constant reinvention.

Through blending memoir, neurological reflection, and professional reckoning, Urgo bravely explores the uneasy relationship between ambition and mortality, learning to view the brain as both adversary and engine, as a force shadowed by self-destruction even as it propelled creativity, risk-taking, and achievement.

Motion to Survive transforms Parkinson’s from passive diagnosis into a way of understanding existence itself and reveals how memory, identity, and movement shape a life lived in constant motion and under increasing awareness of the body’s fragility.

Joseph R. Urgo is a literary scholar and higher education leader whose work engages major figures in American literature, including William Faulkner and Willa Cather, alongside broader topics in American history and culture. Throughout his career, he advanced a strong commitment to access to higher education, with an emphasis on the value of liberal arts. Urgo has held senior academic leadership positions at institutions across the country, including chair of the English department at the University of Mississippi, dean of faculty at Hamilton College, provost at UNC Asheville, and president of St. Mary’s College of Maryland. After retiring to Akron, Ohio, he returned to service in a series of interim leadership roles, including provost and dean of arts and sciences, while adapting to life with Parkinson’s disease. He lives with his wife, Lesley Dretar Urgo, in Canal Fulton, Ohio.