Name: Schuyler J. Chapman, PhD
Her Campus: What is your position at Pitt?
Schuyler Chapman: Visiting Lecturer
HC: What classes do you teach?
SC: At this point I’ve taught 11 different classes. Most often though, I teach American Literature, Detective Fiction, Literature and the Contemporary, and Seminar in Composition. I especially like teaching American Literature because it gives me a chance to introduce students to a more varied way of thinking about our country’s cultural history. But Detective Fiction is a blast, and I like having the opportunity to work with first-year students in Seminar in Comp too.
HC: Why did you decide to become a teacher?
SC: Between undergrad and grad school, I worked for a few years in non-profit administration—really great, rewarding work—but I spent a lot of time trying to talk to colleagues about the books I was reading. Then I had the opportunity to lead some grant-writing seminars at this small college where I was working. In spite of the dry subject matter, I really liked helping out students and faculty put together funding proposals—and then seeing them (sometimes) get the money for their research or creative projects. It became clear to me, as a result, that I wasn’t going to be happy unless I was teaching English.
HC: Why did you choose English literature?
SC: When I was really young, I wanted to become a journalist, but I decided to be an English major during my junior year of high school. My school taught English and history in an interdisciplinary way that year—showing us how historical circumstances shaped narrative, as well as the way literature affected social and political developments. It foregrounded the idea that literature and culture played an integral role in all of the issues that I cared about. I ended up getting really interested in the way literature and other arts weren’t separate from but instead were tied up in political and social issues.
HC: Why Pitt?
SC: I came here for grad school because the program fit how I wanted to study literature. However, the primary reason I looked into the program was because I was a fan of Pitt basketball and had enjoyed a couple visits to the city to watch the Pirates play.
HC: Do you teach anywhere else?
SC: Currently, I’m teaching a class at Duquesne too.
HC: Where did you go to school and what did you study?
SC: I did my undergrad at a small school in upstate NY (Hamilton College) where I was an English major, mostly studying 20th-century British literature. I came to Pitt for graduate school in English, but my focus shifted to 19th-century American literature and, in particular, the way sea narratives and literary sailors were used to examine the limits of US citizenship.
I really enjoy the story of how I decided to write about this topic: I was interested in the way literature shapes ideas of citizenship in the US, and I told a friend, as a joke, that I’d write a dissertation on the portrayal of sailors as US citizens and call it “Citizen Ship.” Then I realized it actually was a feasible idea. I changed the title, though.
HC: Tell us about your family!
SC: I’m married to another member of the English faculty—Amanda Phillips Chapman—who teaches a lot of excellent children’s lit courses. We also have a six-year-old who has decided that he’d like to teach kindergarten because he’d be good at telling children what to do.
HC: Do you have any advice you like to share with your students?
SC: Talk to your professors. Meet with them to talk about class readings or ideas that you have for papers and projects. In some disciplines, this might not be possible, but for most it is. When you’re talking one-on-one about readings or your writing, you can cover so much ground, so much more quickly than you can in class discussions among 20 people or more. I think that this is especially key in humanities classes where you’re doing a lot of writing. It never hurts and almost always helps to talk about your ideas for a paper with an instructor. And, at least for me, I’m always excited to have those conversations.
HC: What’s your favorite book and why?
SC: Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is my favorite book to teach, hands down. It’s such a complex and important autobiography. I find that its depictions of race and gender are remarkably resonant with our current moment. Also, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, because it’s almost certainly unlike any book most people have read. And for people who prefer more current reading, all of Jennifer Egan’s work, but Look at Me and A Visit from the Goon Squad in particular, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche’s Americanah are novels that I recommend to a lot of students, friends, etc.—they’re smart, interesting, but compulsively readable stories.
Authors Note: Responses have been briefly edited for length and clarity
Photo is subject’s own