What is your favourite part about being a professor?
Having students say “Yea, well, what about _____?” and getting my easy assumptions handed right back to me! I learn more from students than I can say.
If there was one piece of advice you could give your students, what would it be?
Read your papers out loud – really out loud! – before you hand them end. It’s a miserable thing to do – I hate doing it myself – but it’s astonishing what you can learn about your writing by listening to it.
Who is a person in history that you would like to be friends with and why?
Absolutely and without a doubt - Jane Addams! There are many reasons to love Jane Addams, not the least of which is that she supported working women’s choice in crazy hats!, but I admire her greatly because she was always willing to change her mind, she listened to what people said and how they said it, and she knew that life without fun was no life at all. She could laugh at herself, but she never laughed at anyone else. With them, though, for sure.
What’s your favourite and least favourite historical fiction movie/TV show?
My favorite historical movie is also my favorite movie, period: The Third Man (1949). Shot mainly on location in bombed out Vienna, it offers a vivid portrait of life in postwar Europe, a grim preview of the division of the Cold War, and a searing indictment of the US’s disastrous combination of hubris and naiveté.My least favorite historical movie/novel is the 1993 movie Gettysburg and Michael Shaara novel The Killer Angels that the movie is based on. The novel is a great read, don’t get me wrong (and better than the movie, in my opinion) but it’s glorification of Lee, his generals, the Southern rank and file, and “honor” generally horrifies me. The book and movie insist that we forget that the Confederate States of America were formed for the express, explicit purpose of creating a slaveholders’ republic, and continuing the enslavement of men and women of African descent. Those facts we cannot ever forget.
Astrology was a big part of history, so what is your star sign?
Gemini, of course.