The Harvard Extension School Newsletter            Spring 2005

Novel approaches

Inspired instructors

Good teachers can make any course interesting through lectures alone, but great teachers use various approaches to bring a subject to life, giving students alternate ways to explore ideas. Some may screen films and discuss historical inaccuracies, while others draw on a museum's special collections, call in experts from the scientific community, or tie topics to real-world scenarios in a way that piques the interest of students.

David Roxburgh, a professor of the history of art and architecture, has been teaching at Harvard since 1996 and at the Extension School since 2002. His course, HARC E-127 The Art of the Islamic Book, 1250-1600, introduces students to the ancient art of bookmaking in Iran and central Asia. "One of the principal points of the course has to do with the challenges a researcher confronts when encountering a historical manuscript," says Roxburgh. To illustrate this, he makes full use of the Islamic and Later Indian Art collection at Harvard's Arthur M. Sackler Museum. Over the course of the semester, several works on paper and intact books are brought out of storage for the class to view and discuss.

"Most Islamic books have been refurbished or repaired over time and subjected to a host of interventions in the text-block proper, including marginal comments as well as owner's notes and seals," he says. "In addition, many Islamic books were produced over time, paintings perhaps completed at a later date than the calligraphy or the illumination. The result is often a highly complex chronology and a book that requires a method of study not unlike archaeology. It is only through seeing a historical manuscript that these kinds of challenges can be fully understood and confronted."

The experience of holding a book and turning its pages is quite different from merely viewing a slide or photograph. "Little can compensate for the direct encounter with the book. It is only possible to understand the sheer level of skill required in making these books--whether one looks to the production of paper, the writing of calligraphy, or the application of paint--through direct access."

Cheryl Wojciechowski, program manager of the Health Science Education Partnership at the Museum of Science and former fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, has been teaching here for two years. Wojciechowski runs many events at the science museum, most of which pertain to issues covered in her Biochemistry courses, BIOC E-110 and BIOC E-111. "I invite my students to these events," she says. "There, they have a chance to talk with some top-notch researchers directly. For example, this spring, students had the opportunity to hear one of the world's leading experts on tissue engineering."

In class she lectures on the basics of biochemistry and tries to emphasize the principles that are most important for students to retain. "I relate it to medicine when I can, since many of my students want to go to medical school," she says. "It is also easiest to remember something when you have personal experience with it--when it involves your own body or the health of a family member."

She finds that the most enthusiastic discussions center on the latest happenings in biochemistry. "I want to give students the feeling that what we are studying is not old and all figured out, but alive and new and just being discovered," she says. "Scientists follow a process, make mistakes, and there is much to be uncovered. I usually ask them to figure it out for me and then come back so I can tell my future classes!"

Nathaniel Taylor, a visiting lecturer in medieval studies at Brown University and, this year, a visiting lecturer in history at Harvard, has for several years taught HIST E-1146 Medieval Warfare and the Crusades. The course surveys medieval western European military culture, from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance, with considerable emphasis on the Crusades. Taylor likes to demonstrate the economic imperatives that underlay various wars and the ways in which military culture is inextricably woven into the fabric of modern Western concepts of the state.

"This is a heavily visual course," says Taylor. "We look not only at medieval representations of warfare and warriors but also at maps and documents--I love using manuscript leaves as a way of bringing students closer to the texts they are reading." An important topic is how modern, often romanticized depictions of medieval themes (for example, Crusaders, Vikings) have colored our conceptions. "There are so many medieval movies that are fun to criticize. I show brief clips of at least two in this course: Mel Gibson's Braveheart and Kenneth Branagh's Henry V."

The highlight of the class, says Taylor, is a visit to the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, one of the two best collections of medieval arms and armor in North America (the other is at the Met in New York City). "This is an unbeatable chance to come face-to-face with the physical artifacts that draw so many to this course in the first place."

Richard Finnegan has taught for more than 30 years at Stonehill College, where he is a professor of political science and the director of Irish and international studies. His Extension School course, GOVT E-1155 Irish Politics, is designed to illuminate the impact of Irish history on the development of the Irish nation and Irish nationalism and the problems of building the Irish state after independence. He uses films on Ireland, such as Angela's Ashes and Bloody Sunday, to illuminate the economic and political conditions examined in class. In addition, he takes advantage of the expertise on Ireland in the Boston area and brings speakers to class, such as journalist Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe, Marianne Bolger of the Irish Consulate, and Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen O'Toole.

Finnegan uses the films to communicate the visual and emotional impact of Ireland's poverty in the 1930s that words and economic statistics cannot convey. "To see people and events in Ulster in their drama and complexity aids the students in their reading of the political conditions and illuminates the difficulty in the quest for a political settlement," he says.

What all of these instructors have in common is an unrelenting enthusiasm for their field of study and a desire to communicate its complexities through a variety of interdisciplinary media. They also share something else: the deep appreciation of their students for their creative teaching styles.

-- Sue Weaver Schopf