Dr. Erich Hertz serves as an essential element of Siena’s English program through his positions as Department Chair and Associate Professor. Whether it be checking in on students completing English internships, making film references, or simply chatting with people about their day, Dr. Hertz has lived up to the title of Campus Celebrity.
Hometown: Chicago, Illinois
Undergrad Alma Mater: Illinois State University
Years at Siena: Ten
Most Influential Book or Author: It always depends on the mood…Martin Amis. The Information is probably my favorite book by him…London Fields, Time’s Arrow.
Favorite Film(s): (laughs) Oh, no! In brackets you’re supposed to put “Inserts laugh”. Oh, no…no, no, no. I should’ve anticipated that one was coming, I’m horrible at these things. Synecdoche, NY…Strangers on a Train…how many do I get to pick?
(Long pause of contemplation after being offered the chance to name five)
I should just say three to finish ruminating about this forever. How about…The Big Lebowski.
(Author’s Note: Dr. Hertz emailed me the day after this interview, saying that he couldn’t let the opportunity of naming five films go to waste. He’d like it to be known that his five favorite movies of the moment are The Big Lebowski, Synecdoche, NY, Notorious, Magnolia, and Blow Out.)
Her Campus Siena: You’re currently the English department chairperson, so how did you come to be at Siena and work your way up to that position?
EH: I really loved the area and I had several options of places to go, and I really loved the small size of the school. I was looking for a liberal arts school where I could have more regular contact with my students and be able to see them over a longer period of time.
The chair position actually rotates through various people in the department. People can volunteer, and I volunteered. I think it’s a really important position to do and I really like the work that’s involved – working with the administration, working with the faculty, and trying to make the best schedule for the students.
HC Siena: You’ve taught many film courses in the past, including ones on Hitchcock and British culture, and I believe I saw that you’re teaching one about Teen Film next semester. What is it about film that you love and why do you find it important to teach?
EH: What is it about film that I love…I think the most important aspect is allowing us to have access to other people’s experience of the world and how that allows us to reflect on our own experiences of the world. I am also just a fan of aesthetics in general so one of the reasons it’s such a pleasure to teach is to take this art form that so many people, or students, have seen over the course of their lives. They have just accepted it as sort of a natural thing that happens and [I like] to talk about the way it’s constructed and the ways in which we’re sort of manipulated to see film a certain way.
HC Siena: Can you tell us about any ideas for future film courses that you may have?
EH: I would love to do a Film Noir class, and I’ve also been thinking a lot about another single director class, like the Hitchcock class. I’ve thought about a Coen brothers class…sometimes I think about Woody Allen and I’ve also thought about doing a David Fincher / Christopher Nolan class.
HC Siena: What is your favorite part about discussing movies and books with college students?
EH: My favorite part is the things that students notice that I’ve never noticed before. I’ve been here for ten years and I have sometimes taught these classes twice in a year, so for a text or a film, I’d teach it twice. I’m always surprised how great it is that no matter how many times I return to it, not only do I discover new things, but in the classroom environment I get to exchange ideas and have students point out things to me I had never considered before. It’s a richer experience for me as well.
HC Siena: What has been your favorite class to teach?
EH: You know, the honest answer, of course, is that I like all of my classes and I think they’re all important. I think English 011 (Literary Perspectives) is important – I love talking about what’s important about literature and textual analysis just to begin with.
When it comes to things that I get the most enjoyment out of teaching, it’s probably the film classes, which is again related to how students tend to bring more ideas into the film class. Students bring a lot of interesting, preconceived ideas into the class that we can work with a lot more, and it’s also interesting because they tend to have a deeper knowledge base in film sometimes than they do in some literature classes.
HC Siena: What, if any, misconceptions do you think people have about movies that may prevent them from taking a film class?
EH: I think that the biggest misconception that they have is that film is just entertainment, to begin with, and so I hope to demonstrate how serious the study of film can be and is. I guess maybe that could put some students off – that they may not think it’s a very serious topic to study, if I had to put it that way. I think that it usually goes the other way around, where film classes usually fill pretty well and you’re battling the other problem where students will take it because they think that it’s just going to be easy. They realize how serious it is and how rigorous the work is in terms of learning about this topic.
HC Siena: I found out that you were involved with many books regarding music, including one about contemporary music in fiction. What can you tell me about that?
EH: I’m really excited about it, the book just came out last year. It’s called Write in Tune. No one had attempted a study of this kind…I’ve taught classes here in pop culture and about pop music. It struck me and my co-editor a few years ago that there are a lot of contemporary novels where pop music plays a central role and that no one had talked about either why pop music plays such an important role in some of the most important American novels or why that’s even important.
So we sort of allow ourselves to talk about what we call the post-modern period – the last part of the twentieth century – where we have this conflation of high art and low art. It’s what we consider low art objects making their way into what’s considered high art objects. This little sub-genre of the novel, the rock novel, was really a great thing to explore.
HC Siena: What do you think about Her Campus and how it’s a forum for many majors, including English, to get together and do less formal writing?
EH: I think it’s a great idea. I’ve heard a lot of colleagues complaining about how students don’t write enough – not necessarily here, but, in general, in English departments across the country. The fact of the matter is that I think that they write more now than they did even a decade or so ago. It’s just that it takes on different forms that are not traditionally recognized.
What we do with that information is a whole other thing because we can argue about whether or not it’s a good thing for you to be limited to a certain number of characters and what it’s doing to your ability to write in long form. I think it’s a positive thing that people are learning to write in all of these different kinds of ways. From what I’ve seen, it seems like Her Campus allows students to get another forum for learning how to write – and write quickly and concisely, which is another thing that especially English majors need to learn how to do. It’s a skill people need to learn to take with them into the world after college.