2020 LYCOMING COLLEGE SPRING MAGAZINE

What do you find most fascinating about Shakespeare and Renaissance drama? Really, the question is what is NOT fascinating about Shakespeare and Renaissance drama? Particular to Shakespeare, I would say it is his quality of what Keats called negative capability — his comfort with posing hard questions without answering them, with presenting all sides of an issue without taking one — that I find fascinating. Shakespeare was a great thinker and philosopher. Aesthetically, the quality of his poetry is unmatched, and his ability to touch on topics and themes that are still very relevant today is uncanny. My students are always surprised by how modern Shakespeare’s plays feel. There is an exuberance to early modern theater that is really exciting and contagious when you read it. It’s very polyvocal because the institution didn’t have an identity. Dramatists of all different feelings, beliefs, values, and thoughts wrote for the theater, so it’s very heteroglossic, which makes reading different texts fascinating. What do you enjoy most about teaching at Lycoming College? I run all my courses for majors as discussion-based courses, and I definitely do not view teaching as some sort of model where I know everything and dispense my wisdom to students, just waiting for them to parrot it back to me. Rather, I view the students and myself as partners in a collective pursuit of shared knowledge. That kind of partnership, and the ability of upper-division students to teach me something in turn, is really energizing and the best part of teaching! It’s also hard to imagine a better work environment in terms of supportive colleagues, the day-to-day office vibe, and everyone’s genuine commitment to improving the institution. In this magazine, we are highlighting athletics. What did you enjoy about being a student-athlete, and how was your involvement in sports beneficial to your academic and overall success? What I enjoyed most about playing softball were the relationships I formed with my teammates, and being part of a team. You can’t really replicate that experience in other walks of life, but anyone who’s been part of a sports team knows it’s enormously rewarding and fun. Playing sports in college is quite all-consuming, and while balancing those commitments definitely gave me time-management skills, looking back I probably made softball too much of a priority and academics not enough, at times. On the whole, however, I gained far more than I lost from participating in sports. Playing softball helped me develop the self-confidence necessary for success in life, develop self-discipline and a strong work ethic, and learn how to channel drive and ambition and competitiveness. It taught me how to win and lose with grace — that sometimes you can give something your best shot and still not be successful, but not to let that destroy you. It taught me a lot about how to work as part of a team and how to try to lead in a way that is authentic to my personality and who I am. I view the students and myself as partners in a collective pursuit to shared knowledge. 29 www.lycoming.edu