Teaching & Research by Turning Points

GATEWAY STUDY OF

LEADERSHIP

TURNING

POINTS

SCHOOL OF

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Teaching & Research

Turning Points The Turning Points book series is a product of the School of Social Sciences’ Gateway Study of Leadership (GSL) at Rice University. Each year GSL Fellows conduct interviews with faculty from a different school and feature select excerpts in five areas. The books in Seres IV (2014-2015) are dedicated to the Rice University School of Humanities and are grouped as follows: Choosing Academia Insider Perspectives Teaching & Research Maintaining Inspiration Future of the Humanities Previous Turning Points series: Series I (2011-12)– Rice University School of Social Sciences Series II (2012-2013)– Rice University School of Natural Sciences Series III (2013-2014) - Rice University School of Engineering Copyright 2015 Rice University. All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the School of Social Sciences at Rice University. Requests for permission should be directed to ipek@rice.edu.

Rice University School of Social Sciences

Gateway Study of Leadership TURNING POINTS

{series IV | 2014 - 2015} Humanities

Teaching & Research

Gateway School of Social Sciences Rice University 6100 Main Street Houston, Texas 77005-1827 U.S.A.

GATEWAY DIRECTOR

Ipek Martinez GATEWAY ADMINISTRATOR

Alex Wyatt TURNING POINTS DIRECTOR

Mary Charlotte Carroll EDITORS

Amber Lo, Matthew McGee, Sevita Rama COPY EDITOR

Emma Hurt COVER DESIGNER

Cindy Thaung

GATEWAY STUDY OF LEADERSHIP CO-DIRECTORS

Nitin Agrawal, Cathy Hu, Tanya Rajan GATEWAY STUDY OF LEADERSHIP SENIOR FELLOWS

Mary Charlotte Carroll, Sai Chilikapati, Giray Ozseker, Andrew Ta GATEWAY STUDY OF LEADERSHIP FELLOWS

Thomas Bennett, Adam Cleland, Hanna Downing, Bradley Hamilton, Aaron Huang, Elisabeth Kalomeris, Amber Lo, Matthew McGee, Neeti Mehta, Kevin Pang, Sevita Rama, Rebecca Satterfield, Tejaswi Veerati, Bridget Youngs

REFLECTIONS ON: TEACHING & RESEARCH

This particular booklet of the Turning Points series, “Teaching and Research,” focuses on the dual roles of academics, both as pursuers and purveyors of knowledge. It explores how society views the teaching and research of the humanities, how humanities scholars see their actions within and beyond the classroom, and the part these scholars play in enriching their students’ lives and the world we share. The experiences and ideas found within the School of Humanities are diverse and inspiring. We hope the stories in this series offer a glimpse into the lives of humanists and their endeavors in culture, art, and knowledge. - Matthew McGee, Editor

CONTENTS

Peter Caldwell, Ph.D. Academia is About Teaching

2. Richard J. Smith, Ph.D. 3 Pressures on Professors 3.

J. Dennis Huston, Ph.D. Keep â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Em on Their Toes

Suzana Bloem, B.A. Much More Than Verbs

J. Dennis Huston, Ph.D. Teaching Drives Research

Alexander Byrd, Ph.D. Painting a Thesis

7. 8.

Christopher Sperandio, M.F.A. A Good Kind of Crazy

J. Dennis Huston, Ph.D. Good Stuff

9. 10.

Maya Soifer Irish, Ph.D. Presenting the Hard Truth

Fay Yarbrough, Ph.D. Changing Perspectives

11.

JosĂŠ Aranda, Jr., Ph.D. Available for the Moment

12. Peter Caldwell, Ph.D. 25 An Imaginative Approach 13.

Victoria Arbizu-Sabater, M.A. No Barriers

14.

Nicolas Shumway, Ph.D. Become Unnecessary

15.

Christopher Sperandio, M.F.A. Meant To Do It

About the Contributors 33 37 Acknowledgements

TURNING POINTS ONE

Academia is About Teaching Peter Caldwell, Ph.D. Samuel G. McCann Professor of History, Rice University

I think academia is about teaching. If you don’t do the teaching, then its purpose is undermined. A second purpose is to be a repository of knowledge. It doesn’t mean that knowledge is a fixed thing; it means that we have people at this university who know a lot about very specific areas who can be called on to talk about them. They can also participate in forums where we try to evaluate what the state of knowledge is in an area. Over the past month I’ve done three presentations on World War I because it’s the hundredth anniversary. Regardless of the context, talking to four people or 150 people, I think it’s really important to have this communication about what the state of knowledge actually is. I think the third important thing that an academic does is be a pest. And that can be in many different forms. It can be in letters 1

to the editor. It can be in op-ed pieces. It can be in your neighborhoods where your neighbor is saying something silly, and you say, “Wait a second, back up your complaining about political parties today. What are their actual functions? What do they actually do?” It’s a kind of teaching function, but it also means you’re going to step on people’s toes from time to time, and I think that we have an obligation to communicate with and challenge the general public as teachers and as researchers.

TURNING POINTS TWO

Pressures on Professors Richard J. Smith, Ph.D. George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities and Professor of History, Rice University

Students at Rice should get to know their professorsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;read their published work and talk to them during their office hours. I have often thought that in fact I do some of my best teaching in this informal, non-threatening setting. I get to know what my students are thinking about, which makes it much easier for me to connect their ideas, interests, aspirations and anxieties directly to my own subject matter. Unfortunately many students assume that their professors will be inaccessible, and this becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. Also students are so used to emailing that they will often email their questions rather than come to visit during office hours. I have seen this pattern over the years, and it is a mistake. Trust me.

TURNING POINTS THREE

Keep ‘Em On Their Toes J. Dennis Huston, Ph.D. Gladys Louise Fox Professor of English, Rice University

The thing about teaching that seems most important is the fact that in order for students to learn what you are trying to teach, they’ve got to participate. I try to teach with a version of the Socratic method where I begin with a question. Often I don’t know exactly what question it’s going to be. As I prepare for a class, I know I am going to begin with one of four or five questions, and sometimes I don’t know until I get in front of the class which one of those I’m going to pick. But I start with a question and I tell students on the first day of class that I’m going to call on them at random, that they aren’t going to be able to run and hide, that I want everyone to participate. For me, the whole joy of teaching is the interaction that happens between me and the students. Even when I taught Shakespeare to 100 people here for a couple of years I wanted to work by question and 5

answer. The questions I ask produce answers that I then can play with and that students can play with. So class becomes for me, and I would hope for them, more fun. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not just standing there telling them things. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m trying to keep them on their toes. I tell them I call on them at random not because Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m a sadist, but because I want them to participate in their own education.

TURNING POINTS FOUR

Much More Than Verbs Suzana Bloem, B.A. Senior Lecturer, Center for Lanuages and Intercultural Communication, Rice University

I feel in my environment with my students that I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t come just to teach them the language. I pray, I actually pray to God that I will be available if my student needs me for something; that I will say the right thing in class, that I say something that may be just what the student needed to hear, that I am available. I think that the teacher is not there just to pour what they know on the student but to prepare the student to go out and make the world better. I did that with my children. I sometimes say I should have clipped their wings a little bit, since I just let them fly too far and they have. But they have done wonders. I think that a teacher should be an ear to hear the student, should be a little bit wiser. So, we do much more than just teaching verbs and culture of Brazil.

TURNING POINTS FIVE

Teaching Drives Research J. Dennis Huston, Ph.D. Gladys Louise Fox Professor of English, Rice University

My research is a function of what I became interested in while I was teaching. I also got interested in certain kinds of things because I was acting in plays and grew interested in a character or some other element. Eventually, I wrote a book about Shakespearian comedy as well as five or six essays on a number of early comedies. Much of the material I wrote was stuff I taught in class, and some is from the plays I was involved in. There is an essay on Bottom in my book that I developed basically by playing Bottom at BakerShake. There is also an essay on Oedipus that was produced because the students began to ask me questions about Oedipus that I didn’t know the answer to. I though I’d better write about this and figure out the answers. Teaching and research are not always totally separate things, and in my case they’ve often served to inspire and reinforce one another. 9

TURNING POINTS SIX

Painting a Thesis Alexander Byrd, Ph.D. Associate Professor of History, Rice University

I used to lead the History Honors seminar for people who are writing Honors theses. One of the things I tried to do was to think of assignments that allowed them to have some time away from the way they normally think about things. We would do an assignment called “Visualizing Your Thesis.” We’re heavy into writing—that’s what historians do—but for this assignment, you had to think about, if your thesis was just graphics or pictures, what would it look like? Some people just brought in graphics that would be in their thesis anyway—maps, etc.—and that’s fine, but some people actually drew their theses. Like if they had some type of artistic ability they drew pictures that represented what they hoped their thesis was or did. One year we had a woman paint a kind of abstract, impressionistic view of her thesis with a bunch of dots that she had to describe to us. 11

TURNING POINTS SEVEN

A Good Kind of Crazy Christopher Sperandio, M.F.A. Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing, Rice University

I am working on a collaborative project on campus that students have helped me develop. I got a grant from the university to take one of the transit buses that goes around the loop from the university, and we turned that into a mobile research facility. So the students and I renovated the interior of the bus into a moving space that seats six. I have driven it about seven thousand miles to places like Minneapolis, working and taking artists to different places and using the bus as a way to blend different regions of the country together: basically, getting artists to travel and meet each other face-to-face. A lot of people, when I told them what I was doing, looked at me like I was crazy. So, I knew that I was on the right track, because if people thought that I was doing something acceptable, then I would be doing the wrong thing. It is crazy but a good kind of crazy. 13

TURNING POINTS EIGHT

Good Stuff J. Dennis Huston, Ph.D. Gladys Louise Fox Professor of English, Rice University

My research does not impact society very much. For me, teaching is what is really exciting where I have the most direct impact. When you write essays, you get really excited about what you are saying and what you are thinking. And every once in a while, I write an essay that I think is going to make a real difference. And I think it’s fair to say that it never has. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t essays I’m proud of. Sometimes when I read them over after I haven’t read them for a long time I think, “The guy who wrote this is pretty smart.” But I don’t think I’ve ever written an essay that had a profound effect on society. The closest I ever got to it is a very strange and absolutely aphoristic story. I had a student who was studying here and went abroad to Germany for a semester. In Germany, he had a tutor (that’s the way they did it there), 15

and the tutor was teaching him a Shakespeare course and said to him, “This is a book you ought to read it because it’s a terrific book on Shakespeare.” He showed him the book, and it was mine! That’s the closest I have ever gotten to any kind of social effect through my research. I believe there are great literary critics, and every once in a while when I was writing an essay maybe I thought I would be one of those critics. But that never happened. I care about the stuff I write and think it’s intelligent. I re-read it and think, “That’s good stuff,” but it has never changed the way a lot of people thought about a particular work.

TURNING POINTS NINE

Presenting the Hard Truth Maya Soifer Irish, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of History, Rice University

Little me and my research won’t have a profound effect on society. I did write an article. I wrote it about “Convivencia,” a term that experts use to describe coexistence of Christians, Jews and Muslims in Medieval Spain, and it seems to be making some impact. I believe in open access of work, so I put all my articles online. Anybody can go on my page, check them out, and download them for free. I believe this is a very effective way to impact. My “Convivencia” article is on interfaith coexistence. It’s one of my most popular articles that I hope people will read. It may not change their minds, but it will make them realize how difficult coexistence is. Even for the past, we tend to idealize and create this image in our minds of some golden age of existence, with all religions living peacefully. It’s a very romanticized image. My article proved that this wasn’t the case. Coexistence was difficult, just like it is today. I hope 17

that my work on the Middle Ages will affect ideas about today’s coexistence. I don’t want it to seem like it’s going to be an easy path. I think coexistence will always be difficult and for some people this is a big pill to swallow. But presenting the truth is the role my research must perform, even if that truth is difficult to accept.

TURNING POINTS TEN

Changing Perspectives Fay Yarbrough, Ph.D. Associate Professor of History, Rice University

There are people from the Cherokee nation who do not like that I refer to the Cherokee as slave holders, or talk about the freed man having some sort of claim to legal rights in the Cherokee nation now. Even more recently related to my work on the Choctaw Indians, I did a public presentation as part of a group of folks writing about the Civil War in the West. We were in California at the Autry Center, and I said something about the Choctaws being Confederates. There was a woman in the audience who was really unhappy, and she wanted to talk to me about it afterwards. She said it makes the Choctaw look really bad. I have experienced some negative responses to my work from people who are uncomfortable with the subject matter. In part, I think, because I do talk about interracial sex, it makes people especially uncomfortable. I have encountered those folks, and my answer is 19

always: I’m a historian, and I work with documents. I can only tell you what I find in the documents, and this is what I find. I mean, I try to be really nice about it, but I can’t not say it because it doesn’t make someone happy. I’ go where the documents take me and this is what I see. What I hope I do, at least in the classroom, maybe not in public settings where it doesn’t work as well because people tend not to be receptive, but at least I hope in the classroom maybe we can get beyond focusing on what makes people uncomfortable. We should focus on the why: why are people uncomfortable thinking about interracial sex? Or why are people uncomfortable thinking about American Indians as slave holders? Why does it surprise people? What are some assumptions people have made about American Indians or about slavery in the United States that make that news a surprise? We should talk about those things.

TURNING POINTS ELEVEN

Available for the Moment José Aranda, Jr., Ph.D. Associate Professor of English, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies, Rice University

I think everything in teaching is about creativity for the most part. If you engage with students, you are trying to anticipate how to bring people from A to Z. And the other side of creativity is you always have to surprise yourself as a professor because you may know how to get from A to Z, but you’re tired of the way you have done it for the first 15 years; and you want to find a new way or you want to find a new angle. Creativity is not only about being mentally sharp but also about being accessible and available for the moment. There’s a lot of creativity in teaching.

TURNING POINTS TWELVE

An Imaginative Approach Peter Caldwell, Ph.D. Samuel G. McCann Professor of History, Rice University

There is constant creativity in my work as a historian. There has to be, whether in teaching or in writing, because there’s never completely adequate information to make a point. You always have to use some kind of intuition in order to pull it together to say, “Hey, this is where things are headed, this is the bigger argument, this is the bigger point.” At the most fundamental level, if you don’t have that intuition, all you’re doing is recording facts. You’re not making the connections between them. I don’t think this is specific to history; I think this is the case across the disciplines, even in the social sciences. I think that something else happens in both writing and teaching, especially in teaching. You’ve got to communicate in a way that keeps people interested, and while some professors can 23

be too showy, there’s got to be an element of show. A half hour or 45-minute lecture is a long time to sit and hear fact after fact after fact and try to put it together in your head. I’d say everything I’m doing except for grading papers involves some kind of creativity. The first ten years I taught, I don’t think I did a very good job of teaching. I remember the breakthrough moment. It had to do with a course on German history, and I realized the big issue was the role of democracy in Germany. So, I decided I had to stir things up. I presented all this information, and then I divided the class into three parts. I said, “You’re going to debate.” I gave them a thesis. Then, instead of having those usual debates where students speak in a monotone and maybe write something on the board—incredibly boring—I jumped in and said, “What do you mean you’re calling those people authoritarians?!” I tried to make them fight with each other. I raised my voice, got a lot more active, ran around the room, and it made a huge difference. The first time I did it—actually every time I’ve done that particular exercise—I’ve had to stop the class when 24

time is up and say, “Look, it’s over; you have to go now,” because they wanted to keep arguing! That was a breakthrough moment, but that’s an example I think of how you’ve got to use imaginative, even showy approaches to make the point.

TURNING POINTS THIRTEEN

No Barriers Victoria Arbizu-Sabater, M.A. Senior Lecturer, Center for Lanuages and Intercultural Communication, Rice University

As a professor, I have the opportunity to see my students not only as students but also as people. Mentoring is a very important activity for me. I feel really happy doing it. I think the teaching goes along with the mentoring; it makes me feel complete. I feel that without mentoring, it’s not teaching. Teaching traditionally has been in the classroom. You have to go into the classroom to begin to teach the student, and normally after class the interaction between student and teacher finishes. But that’s not the way I see it. That’s why, for example, when I finish my class I still speak Spanish. It’s not only inside class but also outside. All around the campus, my students say “Hola Victoria! Hola Vicky!” So I answer back in Spanish, and I don’t care if people around understand or don’t understand.

TURNING POINTS FOURTEEN

Become Unnecessary Nicolas Shumway, Ph.D. Dean of Humanities and Frances Moody Newman Chair in Humanities, Rice University

My hope when I teach is that at some point the subject takes over. I see my role as that of a catalyst. I bring certain subjects, certain ideas, and certain materials to the table, in the hopes that those materials themselves, the subjects themselves will take over. I hope that students will engage with course topics on their own and that what happens in the classroom is the beginning of a conversation with the subject. Or said differently, I think the goal of teachers should be to become unnecessary.

TURNING POINTS FIFTEEN

Meant To Do It Christopher Sperandio, M.F.A. Assistant Professor of Visual and Dramatic Arts, Rice University

Creativity is central to what I am doing as an artist. I think a lot about creative acts and how to teach creativity in the classroom. I worry about the â&#x20AC;&#x153;No Child Left Behindâ&#x20AC;? model of teaching students to tests, and I fear that it does not teach independent thinking. I see creativity as a critical act, a political act really, and so I spend a lot of time thinking about, and looking for resources on how to undo the damage of teaching students to tests. I am going to sound like a hippy, but I am not. We are teaching them how to get in touch with themselves, how to use creativity to learn more about who they are and who they could be. Ultimately, for me as a professional artist, originality is a tough thing. As artists, we generally comment on things, meaning that we take things that already existed and put them together in ways that have not been put 31

together before. The model that I use with my students is the peanut butter analogy. There was a commercial from the ‘70s: two people are walking; one person has peanut butter, and the other has a chocolate bar. Then, they smack together and one says, “Hey, you got your chocolate in my peanut butter!” The other says, “You got your peanut butter in my chocolate!” And they eat it and are amazed at how great it tastes together. That is the creative act, sort of smashing things together until something seems to work and appears to be new. Sometimes it can be unintentional, and that is what working in the studio is about—experimentation. There are a lot of terrific things that were discovered by accident. In the gallery, we say we meant to do that all along.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS José F. Aranda, Jr., Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of English in the Department of English and an Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Rice University. His research areas and specialties include the study of nineteenth century/contemporary Chino literature and early American literature. Dr. Aranda received his B.A. from Yale University in 1984, his M.A. from Brown University in 1988, and his Ph.D. from Brown University in 1995. Victoria Arbizu-Sabater, M.A. is a Senior Lecturer of Spanish at the Center for Language and Intercultural Communication at Rice University. Her research interests include the study of history of the Spanish language in Texas from 1821 to 1836 and during the Independence of Texas. She received her B.A. in Elementary Education with a Minor in English for Secondary School in 1986 and her M.A. in Spanish Linguistics in 1996 from the University of Seville, Spain, and a second M.A. in Spanish Literature in 1999 from Rice University. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Spanish Linguistics at the University of Seville, Spain. Suzana Bloem, B.A. is a sixteenth-year Portuguese Lecturer in the Center for Language and Intercultural Communication at Rice University. She is originally from São Paulo and loves teaching her high-caliber students. She has a degree in English and Portuguese Languages and Literatures from Pontificia Universidade Católica in Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil.

Alexander Byrd, Ph.D. has taught at Rice University since 1998, specializing in Afro America with a focus on black life in the Atlantic world and the Jim Crow South. More recently, he has examined the process of school desegregation and neighborhood change in the urban South. He earned his B.A. from Rice University in 1990, later receiving his Ph.D. from Duke University in 2001. He is currently Wiess College Master. Peter Caldwell, Ph.D. is the Samuel G. McCann Professor of History at Rice University. His work has focused on the meanings of democracy and constitutionalism in Germanyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first republic, conservatism and state theory, legal theory and the welfare state, and the economics and law of planning under state socialism. He is presently working on a project linking the development of political thought and culture in West Germany to the real and perceived crises of the welfare state. Dr. Caldwell received his B.A. from New York University in 1987, his M.A from Cornell University in 1990, and his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1993. J. Dennis Huston, Ph.D. is a Professor of English in the Department of English at Rice University. During his time at Rice, he has taught humanities, drama, public speaking, and Shakespeare on Film. He is also the author of the book Shakespeareâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Comedies of Play and the coeditor of a collection of Renaissance plays. Dr. Huston received his Ph.D. from Yale University. Maya Soifer Irish, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of History at Rice University and is the Faculty Affiliate for the Medieval Studies Program and Jewish Studies. Her research interests are focused on the history of interfaith relations in medieval Spain and the Mediterranean. Dr. Irish received her M.A. from the University of Colorado in 2000 and her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2007.

Nicolas Shumway, Ph.D. is the Dean of Humanities at Rice University and holds the Frances Moody Newman Chair in Humanities. His research and scholarship deals with Latin-American history and culture, ideology and politics of foreign-language education, and ideologies of Hispanism. Dr. Shumway received his B.A. from Brigham Young University in 1969 and his M.A. (1971) and Ph.D. (1976) from the University of California, Los Angeles. Richard J. Smith, Ph.D. is the George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities, a Professor of History, a James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy Scholar, and the Director of Asian and Global Outreach in the Center for Education at Rice University. He is also an adjunct professor at the Center for Asian Studies of The University of Texas at Austin and a member of several professional advisory boards. Dr. Smith co-founded the Baker Institute Transnational China Project and served for 15 years as the Director of Asian Studies at Rice. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Davis, in 1972. Christopher Sperandio, M.F.A. is an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at Rice University. His collaborative artwork explores the numerous margins between mass and museum cultures, taking the form of comic books, television, painted installations, and web sites. He has produced projects for museums and art centers in the US, Germany, Northern Ireland, Denmark, England Scotland, Wales, Spain, and France and with institutions such as MoMA/PS1, Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Institute of Contemporary Art, Fantagraphics Books and DC Comics. Sperandio is the Creator and Executive Producer of ARTSTAR, a reality television series based in the New York art world. He is also a founding member of Kartoon Kings, a media company engaged in the production of comic books, animations and films. Sperandio received his M.F.A. from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Fay Yarbrough, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of History at Rice University. Her areas of interest are African American History, American Indian History, and Southern History. Her current research project focuses on the role of Choctaw Indians in the American Civil War. Dr. Yarbrough received her M.A. from Emory University in 2000 and her Ph.D. from Emory University in 2003.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks to Rice University School of Humanities faculty and Dean of Humanities Nicolas Shumway for making this project possible by sharing career experiences and opinions with the Gateway Study of Leadership fellows through one-on-one interviews. Much appreciation goes to Dean of Social Sciences Lyn Ragsdale for her ongoing support and encouragement, and Dr. Brandon Vaidyanathan for his counsel and guidance this year. Our heartfelt gratitude to the Gateway Associates and supporters of the Gateway programs for making projects like this possible. Many thanks also to the 2014-15 Turning Points team, as well as to current and past Gateway Study of Leadership directors and fellows for their tremendous amount of time and effort to move this project forward with enthusiasm, care and excellence to a new level each year.

Featuring Humanities