Departments: Classics and Africana Studies
How long have you worked at Hamilton? I arrived in 1989.
Have you worked at other schools or in other jobs? I’ve always taught… Let’s see, right before Hamilton I was at the University of California at Irvine. Before that I was at Howard University in Washington DC.
Where did you go to school? For my BA I went to Syracuse University and for my MA and PhD I went to the University of Michigan.
What is the best thing about teaching? You know, I’ve often said to friends that teaching is not a field you should go into for instant gratification. So the best part is when you get a letter or a note or an email from a student that you had 3 years ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, and they say, remember that class when you said XYZ (and I never do)? That totally changed my life. Or when a student sends an email – a student who’s graduated, an alum – asking me for a letter of recommendation. “I want to get a PhD in art history because of a senior thesis I did with you on the representation of Africans in Greco-Roman art.
The worst part? I do like research, but I don’t like having people judge my writing, or judging whether something is worth publishing. That’s really the worst part of the job.
Do you have a favorite class to teach? My favorite course to teach is Elementary Latin, and my favorite students to teach Elementary Latin to are students who believe they have language anxiety… Watching them learn it, and seeing the light bulb go off, makes it all worthwhile.
What led you to teaching, and/or to your particular areas of study? Okay so when I was growing up, my mother died when I was quite young. I was 13 when my mother died so I was basically raised by my grandmother. My grandmother was a cook but she always wanted to be a teacher. She had to leave school to help her family. She was always sad that she could never be an elementary school teacher so she always pushed me… gently! “Stay in school”, I always remember her saying. So I always thought I would be an elementary school teacher. When I was a Junior at Syracuse, when we had to choose our major, I transferred into the school of education. I lasted two weeks. I was so bored. I went back to my pre-major advisor, a German professor, and said “I can’t do this”. He said “yeah, yeah, I knew you would be back”. So I’m sitting across the desk and asked him “what am I gonna do, you don’t understand. My whole life has been built around the idea I’ll be an elementary school teacher”. He said “major in German”. I said “no, not majoring in German”.” Well what have you taken that you enjoyed?” “Well I really liked my Latin courses.” “Then major in Latin”. And the rest is history. I actually ended up a double major in Latin and math. It think it was because of symbolic logic, I really liked symbolic logic. I can’t imagine myself doing anything else.
What do you do outside of teaching? My favorite absolute favorite hobby is knitting. I have so many projects my husband hates me. Every room in the house has half-finished knitting projects. So knitting, I enjoy reading, I have a deaf kitty who’s a lot of fun. And then we just got a little puppy, a Welsh Corgi. She’s so cute; she’s a bit of a rebel. Corgis are supposed to have both ears straight up, but she refuses to keep them both up. Her left ear, I think, she keeps flat. Her name is Harley, and she’s a trip. Also I have two grandsons; I have one grandson who’s four, and his brother Isaac is fourth months