Faculty Profiles
Blakey Vermeule  Ask
associate professor of English Blakey Vermeule what brought
her to Northwestern from Yale in 2000, and it's like
asking an excited student, who has just learned she's
been accepted to the MALit program.
BV: When I was offered
this position I really felt like I had won the lottery, because
it's such a wonderful University, within such a dynamic
urban setting. I'm very happy here.
Q: It wasn't long after you came
to the Weinberg College at Northwestern that you began teaching
in SCS as well. Why?
BV: I personally think
that people shouldn't go to college until they're
about 38. Having those years of experience is so valuable
when it comes to embracing literary texts and thought. I really
am thrilled now to be teaching older, continuing students.
Q: Do you see a lot of students that
age or older?
BV: Absolutely, but it's
a mix. For example, there are some high school teachers who
come in at age 24 with a very targeted goal in mind. But there
are many others who study here just because it's more
interesting to them than, say, sports or socializing. I think
that people have a kind of intellectual hunger, and sometimes
that surfaces later in life. My job, in a sense, is to help
quench that intellectual thirst.
Q: Is that process what is most rewarding
to you?
BV: The most rewarding
part of my job is seeing people flourish. Sometimes students
are a bit fearful of their capabilities after so many years,
fearful of whether they can still grasp academic language
and rigor. I try to reassure them that they can succeed in
my class. Then, watching students get excited about ideas
and achieve a certain mastery over the material is, to me,
the most exciting thing in the world.
Q: What would you say is the value
of an MALit degree?
BV: I think it's
the potential for intellectual awakening that it represents.
The value of that is so understressed in our culture, but
so very, very important.
Jorge Coronado
 By
day, assistant professor Jorge Coronado teaches undergraduates
in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. By night, however,
he enjoys the opportunity of teaching graduates in the MALit
program for the School of Continuing Studies.
JC: One of the remarkable
things about the MaLit program is that the students have an
enthusiasm that is pretty much unmatched on campus. They are
all so very interested and focused-truly dedicated and
enormously prepared for whatever you give them. That's
very gratifying as an instructor.
Q: Does that enable you to use some
different techniques in the classroom?
JC: Certainly discussions
go a bit further, but one of the things that I think it allows
one to do is to let students be responsible for a part of
their education. For example, as an organizational aspect
of my courses, I tend to include things like presentations,
where students are responsible for leading the class, including
me, in a discussion on a particular topic. This is only possible
because the students are so well prepared.
Q: What did you focus on as you developed
your SCS classes?
JC: I work with Latin
American literature, mostly from the 20th century, and I know
that very few of my SCS students will come to class having
had contact with that. So it's not productive for me
to presume that they have a historical context; it's
more helpful for me to think in terms of what we can imagine
in order to speak productively about these texts or the literary
culture. So what's most important to me as a teacher
is creating a common language-not necessarily a specialized
language-with which to speak about this particular kind
of literature. It's a challenge, but it's also
very exciting.
Bill Savage Teaching in the MALit program, Bill Savage finds
rich material for literary discussion everywhere, from baseball
to the Beats to The Simpsons.
Q: You won the SCS Distinguished Teaching
Award. What goes on in your classes?
BS: The worst thing that can happen
in a class is when the material is predictable and dry, canonical books
taught the
same old way. I never teach a book the same way twice.
Q: How would you put a fresh spin on a book
like The Great Gatsby?
BS: I teach it as a crime novel.
By the end of the book the classic American types - the ones who want
to move up the ladder - are
dead, while the rich literally get away with murder. But
there are other interesting ways to look at Gatsby.
I’ve changed how I
teach it because of a paper a student wrote. She argued
that Tom is the hero because he is real, while Gatsby is a fake. That’s
original thinking, and that’s the kind of student we get in
SCS.
Q: You write about Chicago authors like Nelson
Algren and Saul Bellow. Are Chicago writers different?
BS:Places shape people and people shape places. Algren and Bellow
present dueling visions of Chicago, because the same space means different
things to different people.
Q: MALit students represent a variety of interests
and backgrounds. What do they have in common?
BS: The desire to learn and to be
challenged - that applies across the board at SCS. The MALit program
entails a substantial commitment
to intellectual work, without the years a PhD program demands.
It’s
like running a 10K instead of a marathon. An SCS master’s is an
ideal way to have a life and an intellectual
life.
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