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A View from College Hill

Rereading

By President Joan Hinde Stewart

At an Alexander Hamilton birthday party this year, I met a Hamilton graduate of the '60s who lives in Tucson. He spoke of his enduring debt to Paul Parker and Austin Briggs, professors who taught him the appreciation of art and the practice of writing. I also learned about his unusual path in life: After a distinguished career as a surgeon, he went back to school for a Ph.D. in cell biology and is now a full-time teacher and researcher. As finalist last spring for an outstanding teaching award bestowed by undergraduate honors students, he was interviewed about his pedagogy; he explained that what he tried to do was simply to emulate the teachers he had as an undergraduate at Hamilton College.

The story inevitably reminded me of the role played in my own life by a teacher with whom I studied when I was 21. Genial, generous, precise and unflappable, Georges May displayed the qualities of mind and spirit that made me want to shape my life according to the imperatives that guided his, to find meaning more or less in the ways that he had found it, through teaching, research, reading and writing. Georges taught French literature of the 18th century, the age of reason, enlightenment and bold experiments in the writing of fiction. Now I teach that same literature.

Indeed, I found the story of our Tucson alumnus stirring for an even more immediate reason, for I was, at that very time, preparing to teach a seminar at Hamilton and rereading a novel that I know well, with a view to using it in class. In the process, I was realizing once again the teaching standards that shape the student experience on College Hill. So it seemed to me altogether reasonable that for a Hamilton alumnus, even 40 years out, the models of good teaching should remain those close to us here.

One of them is with me in the classroom that I share with John H. O'Neill, as we co-teach a seminar on early modern French and English novels. I also gain thereby the pleasure of rereading texts from which the tasks of my office have often distracted me. Rereadings is the name of one of my husband's books, by the way, and I like that title because it suggests so much about what we do with works that leave an impression on us and that do not readily give up all their secrets. Even though John and I are dealing with English novels he knows well and French novels I know well, we are both, as usual, rereading all of them. And no rereading is as demanding or as rewarding as that undertaken with a class in view.

The prospect of sharing a text, whether familiar or new, beloved or vexing, with a motivated group of young and vigorous thinkers (not to mention a distinguished expert in the field and a dedicated auditor) concentrates and challenges the mind. The syllabus for our seminar includes one of the most splendid examples of the early European novel, La Princesse de Clèves, published more than 300 years ago by Marie de Lafayette. I read it for the first time when I was in graduate school and have reread it numerous times since then. But in class the other day, I saw afresh Lafayette's taut story of love and politics, viewing it through the lens of the understanding of those around me. Experiences such as this are, of course, a mark of good literature — and a tribute to an insightful group of readers.

The articles in this issue of the Alumni Review are testimony to Hamilton's history as a college defined by teaching. They are reminders, too, that the teaching traditions of Jean D'Costa and the late Sidney Wertimer and Russell Blackwood — along with those of Digger Graves, Swampy Marsh, Bobo Rudd and other legendary professors forever remembered by whimsical, affectionate nicknames — are being renewed by further generations of outstanding teachers. Forty years from now, some future Hamilton president may well meet an alum (perhaps someone who is studying at Hamilton today) and hear how she took enduring inspiration from teachers whose stories are included here.