paying homage to my intellectual mentors

Upon re-reading my earlier postings, I realized perhaps I am coming across as a bit harsh as regards my former professors. I am very fortunate to have had many excellent professors in my long academic career as a student, and I wish to honor them briefly below.

Despite my grumblings about the Department of German & Slavic Studies at Rice U, I did have some professors I really really liked and who helped shape the way I think about things.

so, at Rice University we have:
1) Dr. Michael Winkler : we got off to a very rough start, but he stuck up for me at my thesis defense, and he did invite all the grad students in the department down to a crawfish boil at his Victorian style house near the Historic District in Galveston, and we had some interesting conversations that whole weekend. He quit as my thesis director but had enough good will to remain on the committee, which I was grateful for when the time came for the oral defense.

2) Dr. Margret Eifler: Feminist, Postmodern guru, Film Studies. I even took a Women's Film class from her. I think I annoyed her when I kept bringing up Soviet/Russian women's films that she'd never heard of, though. Also, I always felt like I was beating my head against a wall dealing with the PoMo-theories & writings.

3) Dr. Klaus Weissenberger: We also got off to a rough start, and I never really cared for his intense focus on poetry and Lyrik. It's just not my thing, but I did develop a grudging respect for what Dr. Weissenberger did/does in that area, not least because I know I never could do that, even if I wanted to. Moreover, when the chips were down, he took me under his wing, took over as my thesis director, and helped me get my grades up and produce an acceptable MA thesis. ( a thesis I now deplore and feel embarrassed about, but it passed muster at the time)

4) Dr. Waclaw Mucha: Professor of Russian & Polish, adjunct faculty member for the Slavic side of the department. He was my professor for most of the core Russian language courses I audited in my spare time. Really nice man and very knowledgeable.

5) Dr. Ewa Thompson: Professor of Russian & Polish, head of the Slavic division of the Department. She taught one of the survey courses on contemporary Russian culture that I audited, and also administered my translation exam for Russian, which I passed acceptably, according to Dr. Thompson. I disagreed with her conservative, Catholic-centered politics (and staunch anti-communism), and she couldn't stand Dr. Eifler, who I liked, but she was/is an affable person with a formidable intellect. She and I both deplored PoMo, but for vastly different reasons. I always did my best to keep my personal politics to myself around Dr. T.

6) Dr. Richard Wolin: Now a distinguished professor at CUNY, and was universally despised by members of the German Department during his tenure at Rice U; I never took any classes with him, never spoke with him personally, but I found his books, especially The Terms of Cultural Criticism, very intellectually engaging. I attended a conference on the resurgence of NeoNazism held on the TAMU campus. In addition to myself and another graduate student, Dr. Wolin came to represent Rice University. Dr. Wolin has written probing works on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and has argued that Heidegger's philosophy is not so far removed from his Nazism as his defenders tend to assert. Wolin also has misgivings about Postmodernism--but I find I can no longer really stomach his writings, post 9-11. He always was a little too pro-capitalist, pro-USA ueber alles for my tastes, and the work he's produced since 9-11 is a little too holier-than-thou, a little too gratuitous with the Left-bashing. At an earlier stage in my academic career I once thought I might like to go back and get a PhD in Intellectual History under Dr. Wolin's guidance. But by the time I was looking at maybe doing that again, he'd already moved on to CUNY. How dare he advance his career while I was trying to advance my own!! ;-) Well, it was probably just as well, as things turned out. I still respect Wolin, but I have to read him with a much bigger grain of salt these days.

There are a few notables back at Aggieland I'd like to single out for a big collective thank you, too:

In the German Department:

1) Dr. Roger Crockett : now the head of German and Russian Studies at Washington & Lee University in Virginia. He taught the German Drama class every spring, the members of whom joined the ranks of the German-language Drama troupe Die Aggie Komoedianten and put on a single multi-act German Drama, usually from the 20th century, although sometimes comedies from the Medieval writer Hans Sachs were adapted as well. We tried to focus on comedy, especially slapstick/physical comedy, since that transcends language barriers. It was a brilliant living language laboratory, that, sadly, has been discontinued at TAMU due to lack of interest on the part of students. Dr. Crockett accepted the position in Virginia prior to my graduation.
Dr. Crockett was also the faculty sponsor of the TAMU German Club, which met every Wednesday evening to drink beer and speak German (usually in that order).

2) Dr. Eric Williams : Had the unenviable task of filling the mighty big shoes of Roger Crockett, and lived in his shadow for a few semesters before finding his own voice and place at TAMU. Eric and I got off to a rough start, with me just coming back from Germany to find my beloved TAMU German club having been taken over by students who were brazenly crypto-NeoNazi. It was very disillusioning and not fun; I abandoned German club, defecting to the TAMU Russian Club, where I felt much more accepted and at ease. I had been in Russian Club before, but not as actively due to my earlier, heavier participation in German Club. I made close friendships with a number of TAMU Russian club members and had a fun time with them. Anyway, Eric and I had a long talk, and it came out that he didn't like the NeoNazi frat boys any more than I did. We collaborated on the Komoedianten productions. I basically knew Eric from about my Junior year through my Senior year and then also through my fifth year (double major and study abroad delayed my graduation a bit). In time we became good friends, and used to correspond on intellectual matters every now and again. After I went to library school we sort of lost touch.

Other TAMU Departments:

3) Dr. Chester Dunning: truly excellent History Professor, Historian of Russia, took a Western Civ course from him, and the first Russian history survey course, Russia from the Medieval Period to 1880.

4) Drs. Brett and Olga Cooke: This academic couple are probably the nicest professors in all of TAMU, and they go out of their way to make a difficult subject (Russian as a foreign language) accessible, and yes, even fun! I wish TAMU would consider letting them teach part time at TAMUG (if they wanted to, of course). Simply wonderful people.

5) Dr. Resch: cantankerous, unapologetic Marxist professor of History. At the time, I didn't like him, but in retrospect I learned a helluva lot from him and his survey course on the 2nd half of Western Civ was fantastic. His lectures got better and better the more history he covered closer and closer to the present.

6) Dr. Terry Anderson: Texas A&M's other token Left-wing History professor. Non-Marxist, but still a very insightful critic of US domestic culture and US Foreign policy. Vietnam vet (U.S. Navy), outspoken, all around great guy, and funny, too. Think Jimmy Buffett-as-professor, and you'll get the right picture.

...and while I'm driving down memory lane, I even have an honorable mention from the ranks of the William P. Clements High School faculty:

1) Dr. Carr (then Mr. Carr): Senior honors history teacher. I had to petition to join his class, and even had a personal interview with Mr. Carr about my reading interests and interest in history in general. I worked my butt off in his class and came up with a "B-" that I was proud of, much more proud than the easy "A" I would've gotten in a less advanced class. He focused on labor and social history, made students read concise, scholarly articles then debate each other. Exams were all essay exams, just like college. He began, as Kant said of Hume, to "wake me from my dogmatic slumber", and was the first person who really made me think that the unbridled capitalism and rabid anti-communism the GOP was preaching might not be such great ideas after all.

2) Mrs. Tull: Best. English. Teacher. Ever. Period. (and she would roll her eyes at fragments like that)

So here I pay collective thanks to these mentors, without whom I could not have become that what I am today. I still haven't figured out what that THAT is, yet, but I'm working on it, and anyway, these people made me a better person, that much I do know.