The papers in this volume are versions of talks delivered to faculty and students of the Department of Classics at Brown University during the Spring of 1991. They are gathered here in hopes that others may learn from them, and where applicable, incorporate the conclusions and advice offered into their own thinking and teaching.
I was fortunate to be able to attend all the sessions, and am delighted that we can make them available to a wider public. They are the thoughts of excellent teachers who present, informally, their thoughts on an activity which they perform so well. Without boasting I feel it true to say that teaching in the Department of Classics at Brown has always been a high priority, and that my colleagues do it well. We had time only to hear from a few of them.
We acknowledge with gratitude the impetus to this series provided by the Association of American Colleges (supported by a grant from the Foundation for the Improvement of Post-secondary Education) and Brown's Center for the Advancement of College Teaching directed at that time by Dean Harriet Sheridan. Though we constantly reflect on how we teach, we rarely share our thoughts and concerns about teaching with one another. Dean Sheridan affiliated us, through the AAC, with Connecticut College in a collaborative attempt to improve the match between college teaching and graduate experience.
AAC has a long-standing commitment to acclimatizing recent PhD's to college campuses, and has welcomed Brown-Connecticut, along with Duke-Guilford, in a pilot project which examines the relation between graduate universities and liberal arts colleges. We met with representatives of AAC and others, and had what I feel were most interesting sessions. The primary (for me) result of this project is before you now, the papers given here.
Professor Robert Ball of the University of Hawaii gave an informal demonstration session of his textbooks Latin: A Reasonable Approach in our series, but we do not include his remarks here: they are to be found in his texts. Though perhaps not directly concerned with teaching as such, Professor Panchenko's paper has been included because of its general and inspirational interest: he was Professor at the Independent College of Humanities in Leningrad at the time he gave his talk here, and he moved us all with his determination that the Classics must be taught.
It would be supererogatory of me to summarize all the papers, and I shall therefore merely introduce their authors briefly. Dirk t.D. Held received his PhD at Brown, and is currently Professor of Classics at Connecticut College, where he heads the Department and also shoulders major administrative responsibilities. He undertook to introduce two of our advanced graduate students to the demands and joys of college teaching at Connecticut College.
Professor Kurt Raaflaub, formerly John Rowe Workman Professor of Classical Studies at Brown, is now on leave from the University, as he serves -- with Deborah Boedeker -- as Co-director of the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington. He has published widely on ancient history, but has always regarded his teaching as central to his activities here at Brown.
Professor S. Georgia Nugent was one of Brown's outstanding younger teacher-scholars. Enrollments in her classes routinely ranged between 150 and 300, and she was much in demand as counselor and speaker on campus. She has published, through the Smithsonian Institution, a set of lectures on ancient myth. She currently serves as Assistant to the President of Princeton University.
Martha C. Nussbaum was University Professor of Classics, Philosophy and Comparative Literature at Brown for a decade before leaving this past spring to take up new duties at the University of Chicago in the Faculty of Law. She has published a number of very well received books and articles. She is known nationally through her writings in more popular journals and her appearances on television. Her courses regularly drew large numbers of students.
Professor Joseph Pucci is a recent addition to our faculty, with major interest in later Latin and medieval studies. He, too, is much in demand as a teacher and counselor, and has seen enrollments in his classes increase two and three-fold in the few years he has been at Brown.
If I might editorialize briefly about my colleagues. They are excellent teachers as well as fine scholars, but they do not follow one model of teaching, as will be seen from their presentations. They share a serious interest both in their students and in the material they present to those students. Beyond that their approaches are diverse, their styles are various, their personalities strikingly different. Students do not require a flashy performer and glib approaches; from their instructors they want respect for themselves as persons and respect for the material the professors present. Respect and modesty do not in turn mean self-negation or diffidence -- one should not hide behind the material or seek support in authority. One may disagree violently, one may criticize ancient works, and one may trumpet one's own opinions. The important thing is not to patronize or ignore the student or set one's self above (e.g.) Virgil. A certain humility in humanistic studies is called for, and my colleages demonstrate this virtue both in their teaching and in their presentations here.
I acknowledge here with gratitude the financial support for publication of these papers as Brown Classical Journal, Supplement to Volume 8 (1992) provided by Peter Bokor, Brown '82, "as a token of gratitude for the education he was given by the Classics Department." We are delighted that the Amerian Classical League has seen fit to provide a still wider circulation throught the World Wide Web.
Providence, RI
September, 1995