Defining Moments on My Academic Path (GH #34)

What follows is a brief talk I shared yesterday with the College of Arts & Sciences faculty at my university, and, of course, it involves literature. :-)

Path through gardens, Scone Palace, Scotland

I grew up loving books.

My mom often read to me when I was little. And by the end of elementary school I was making weekly runs to the library, filling my arms with a stack of books that reached up to my chin. It was a pattern that, more or less, continued up through high school.

When it came time to decide on a major for college, and I visited the school that would become my undergraduate university, I met with a professor to whom the “undecided” students were often directed. I can see now why. Her advice to me was “major in what you love.” So I did: I majored in English, and I’ve never regretted it.

The summer after my sophomore year, I went on a six-week trip with Greater Europe Mission to teach English as a Foreign Language in Latvia. At age 20, I barely knew what I was doing in the classroom, but it was an excellent experience overall.

After that, I knew I wanted to become a professor.

These were the defining moments that led to my choice of discipline.

In grad school at Baylor University I immediately discovered the richness and depth of medieval & Renaissance literature, of poetry, and especially of the devotional poet George Herbert.

It may come as a surprise to some of my colleagues that my doctoral dissertation was a gender studies approach to George Herbert’s poems. It was a lengthy academic exercise, with a critical approach that did not focus much on what I had fallen in love with about Herbert’s poetry—the faith-filled richness of it and the resonance with human experience and the Christian life.

At my dissertation defense, my 3^rd reader—from Baylor’s religion department—was very perceptive. She asked about my topic, “Did it feed your soul?”

The answer was “no.” This defining moment, at the very end of my schooling, was an influence on my choice of approach to my academic discipline.

That approach is to point toward what we can see in literature that “feeds the soul”:

·      truths of human experience and of the spiritual life that remind us that all truth is God’s truth;

·      the beauty of image, or phrasing, or sound that reflects God’s beauty; and

·      the goodness toward which imaginative literature has the power to move perceptive readers.

The opening stanza of George Herbert’s poem “The Elixir” encapsulates the way I hope to approach my life as both scholar and professor:

     Teach me, my God and King,

     In all things thee to see,

And what I do in any thing,

     To do it as for thee (1-4)

  

It took a while, but I have slowly been redeeming my dissertation, carving out portions, reworking them, and publishing them as pieces that will, I hope, gently guide readers to set their sights on things above.