April 08, 2009

Contact:   Bill Giduz

At a faculty meeting on April 7, Dean of Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs Clark Ross announced the appointment of eight faculty members to named professorships. Ross said, "This has been a very difficult and challenging year for us financially. But an overriding goal has been to maintain the quality of the experience for our students.

"In pursuit of that worthy objective, no one has worried a minute about the continued quality of the courses and research mentoring that faculty offer. The trustees, the President, I, and all on campus know of this faculty's commitment.

"Those faculty whom we honor today have a myriad of contributions and individual strengths, yet each brings the dedication to teaching and challenging our students that characterize the faculty as a whole."

The honorees are:

William K. Mahony (religion) and Scott D. Denham (German) named as Dana Professors
Verna M. Case (biology) named as the Beverly F. Dolan Professor
W. Rodger Nutt (chemistry) named as the James Martin Professor
Cole Barton (psychology) named as the inaugural holder of the C. Louise Nelson Professorship
Magdalena Maiz-Pena (Spanish) named as the William H. Williamson Professor
Gerardo Marti (sociology) named as the L. Richardson King Professor
Samuel Sanchez-Sanchez (Spanish) named as the MacArthur Professor

Professor of Religion and Department Chair William K. Mahony Named Dana Professor of Religion

As vice-chair of the faculty pro tem, it was not unusual for William K. Mahony, professor and chair of the religion department, to be called to drop by the academic dean's office one March afternoon. But it was not a routine call, Mahony soon found: He had been named Charles A. Dana Professor of Religion.

"I was quite humbled," said Mahony. "It was a great moment, a great honor." Mahony came to Davidson in 1982 as the first tenure-track religion professor whose specialties lay outside the Western tradition, namely in the religions of Asia, especially those of India. Ever since arriving, he has been impressed by the academic tenor of Davidson. "I was impressed by the faculty's expertise and happy with the sense of openness of the faculty and leadership of the college," he said.

Educated at Williams, Yale and the University of Chicago, Mahony traveled independently for seven months in India as an undergraduate, and has returned to India for extended periods many times since then. He has led the Davidson Semester in India program and faculty seminar trips to India a number of times since 1985.

Mahony's publications include The Artful Universe: An Introduction to the Vedic Religious Imagination and, as co-author, Meditation Revolution: A History and Theology of the Siddha Yoga Lineage. He was Davidson's first MacArthur Foundation Assistant Professor of Religion, and has been a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship. He was an editor and major contributor to the 16-volume Encyclopedia of Religion, First Edition, which received the Hawkins Prize and the Dartmouth Medal from the American Library Association for the best work in any category of publishing. He is a former board member of the American Academy of Religion and a past president of the American Academy of Religion Southeast Region. He serves as president and board member of the Muktabodha Indological Research Institute.

At Davidson, Mahony has received the ODK Teaching Award and the Hunter-Hamilton Love of Teaching Award.

"To me, liberal education is very closely aligned with spiritual discovery, growth and refinement," Mahony said. "My faith is that each one of us has what can be called a spark of divine light shining within the mind and heart but that this light is darkened and smothered and suffocated by various pressures in the world, forces of ignorance and self-centeredness. Liberal education helps free that light.

"Students are the embodiments of seekers and the expansive spirit. I find great joy in working with minds that are opening and hearts that are expanding," Mahony said.

The liberal arts tradition in particular--with its Greco-Roman pedigree of studies undertaken by "free citizens in the public sphere" and its American renaissance in the founding of colleges such as Davidson, "is particularly well-suited as a framework exploring that darkness and emerging from it to intellectual and spiritual freedom," Mahony said.

"Liberal education is based on faith and trust that the mind can become free of prejudice and delimiting categories," he said. "The skills, attitudes and approaches--the arts of a liberal arts education--can be applied not only to any profession or vocation; they help establish and nourish an entire philosophy of life based on the value of an inquiring, informed and disciplined mind and sensitive heart."

Mahony will use the resources of the Dana Professorship for a variety of purposes. He would like to complete his research in particular libraries in India for a book on Hindu perspectives on the life of contemplative spiritual love. He plans to attend professional conferences and looks forward to being able to invite academic colleagues to the Davidson campus.

Professor of German and Director for the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies Scott D. Denham Named Dana Professor of German

Scott D. Denham, professor of German and director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, has been named Charles A. Dana Professor of German.

“I was both shocked and affirmed,” said Denham. “My first reaction was that I’m not wise enough or published enough—I speak out of turn and sometimes they don’t let me sit on certain committees. But really, it’s an affirmation of my work and my vocation and my commitment to this place. I’m honored.”

Denham won the Hunter-Hamilton Love of Teaching Award in 2002, for dedication to students across the academic spectrum, from working with interdisciplinary majors with complex interests “that keep them up at night,” to one of his greatest loves, teaching beginning German. “That can be very goofy and intense, and the students are mystified from day one,” he said, “but in a month, we’re having baby conversations. There is a great sense of payoff and free space.”

A unique teaching style is working with small groups of students in what Denham terms Oxford-style tutorials that “technically, don’t exist at Davidson,” involving close independent reading and writing by students, shared in long-format weekly sessions on aesthetics or literary theory, for instance.

Denham also has edited and translated numerous volumes and papers in German studies, including W.G. Sebald: History, Drama, Memory, edited with Davidson Professor of German Mark McCulloh and A User’s Guide to German Cultural Studies, edited with Irene Kacandes and Jonathan Petropoulos. He also co-edits a book series called Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies. The most recent of Denham’s numerous grants include a 2008 Associated Colleges of the South Mellon Faculty Renewal Grant with three other Davidson professors, for an interdisciplinary teaching project on memory. Denham’s recent scholarly work has addressed public memory in Germany, including analysis of current debates about representations of German suffering in the shadow of Auschwitz.

Denham will use the resources of the Dana Chair to extend and deepen his own research of Walter Gropius (1883–1969), the German architect who founded the Bauhaus and, with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, the larger modernist movement in architecture. Denham edited and catalogued what he described as “a couple dozen linear feet” of Gropius papers during three-and-a-half summers at the Houghton Library at Harvard, where he received his Ph.D. in 1990, the year he came to Davidson. Many more meters of Gropius documents still reside in archives in Germany.

“For someone who’s interested in interdisciplinary studies,” he said of the modernist movement, which encompassed many forms of art and technique, “it’s all out there, and it’s a mess.”

His own book-lined office walls are neatly organized at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, which he has directed since 2005. Denham is especially thrilled at the research prospects the Dana makes possible, he said, since much of the last seven years since he received tenure have been spent primarily in service to students and the college, and secondarily in service to his profession, leaving precious little time for in-depth scholarship.

“The Dana Professorship is a perfect complement to my work at Davidson, and I’m looking forward to digging into the archives in Berlin soon. I’m so very grateful for the honor bestowed and opportunities it provides.”

Professor Verna M. Case named as the Beverly F. Dolan Professor

Her peers may say that Verna M. Case deserves her new title as Beverly F. Dolan Professor of Biology simply for serving 16straight years as department chair. But Case has reveled in this oft-dreaded administrative service, and used it to become a powerful and effective advocate for science education at Davidson.

She arrived at Davidson in 1974 with bachelor, master’s and Ph.D. degrees in zoology from Penn State University, becoming the sixth member of a department that today employs 15 faculty, two teaching assistants, an administrative assistant, a grants assistant and shared positions with other science departments, including an animal care technologist and an instrumentation technician.

That tremendous growth reflects the increased popularity of biology as a major, to the point that it now regularly ranks among the top four at Davidson. That is due in large part to the modern facilities, outstanding instruction, and numerous student research programs Case has advocated. She has always insisted on thinking ahead. “That’s my mantra,” she said. “Continually thinking of the next step and looking to the future keeps you from getting stuck in the present.”

She has loved her administrative role, and takes pride in helping younger colleagues reach their potential as teachers and advance their careers, while offering students the latest equipment for learning, and unparalleled undergraduate research opportunities.

In 1993, when she became chair, biology and physics were squeezed together into the second and third floors of Dana Building. It had been obvious for some time that the college needed new science facilities, and Case was eager to help make it happen. She began networking nationally with science advocacy groups like Project Kaleidoscope to seek funding for facilities and update teaching methods for the increasingly high-tech field. She also instituted regular meetings of the chairs of Davidson’s science and math departments that continue to this day. In addition to identifying common concerns, they are able to speak directly about their needs and ideas with top college administrators, gaining advantage from a forum that is not so large as a general faculty meeting, yet more impactful than a one-on-one meeting. Case emphasized the needs again in the Statement for Science and Mathematics at Davidson College that became the focus for the college’s 1990 Southern Association of Colleges and Schools accreditation review.

With the support of trustees and college administration, the dream was finally realized in 1998 when the college raised $13 million to build the new Watson Life Sciences Building for biology and psychology, and additional funds to renovate the Dana Science Center for both biology and physics.

With facilities needs met, she turned her attention to programming. She secured multi-year funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to provide undergraduate research experiences. Then she spearheaded creation of the Davidson Research Initiative, sponsored by the college and The Duke Endowment.

The college’s current strategic assessment process has provided her with another opportunity to consider the next direction for the program. She serves on the Committee for Curriculum Development, chaired a study group on teaching and learning, and is one of four faculty on the strategic planning steering committee. She believes the next important steps in science education, as in other fields, will be increased emphasis on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary classes, a focus on the global implications of the scientific enterprise, and an even greater emphasis on engaging a diverse group of students in the process of science as early as possible.

She has also boosted biology and the other sciences over the years through her involvement in the Medical Humanities program, chartering of a campus chapter of the Beta Beta Beta biology honor society, and initiation of student poster fairs to highlight their research work.

“I love planning and trying to figure out how you get to what’s next,” she said. “The whole process is intriguing to me.”

She’ll be giving up her departmental chair next year to Associate Professor Barbara Lom. But Case isn’t leaving her interest in administrative leadership behind. In fact, she’ll be immersed even more deeply. She was recently accepted into the American Council on Education Fellows Program, a higher education leadership development program that prepares participants to become senior leaders at colleges and universities. As part of the program, she will spend an extended period of time working directly with Davidson College President Tom Ross on the college's strategic planning process. Participants in the ACE Fellows Program immerse themselves in an institution's culture, policies and decision-making processes in order to learn valuable lessons in administrative leadership.

Though her devotion to administration is rewarding, Case concedes that it has come at the cost of her personal research, and limited her teaching opportunities. She brought to Davidson a research project in the social organization of zebra finches that she has not been able to pursue in recent years. To compensate for her administrative duties, she teaches a reduced load of courses, in animal behavior, a senior colloquium, and a seminar in reproductive technology course in the Medical Humanities program enlivened almost daily by issues in the public sphere such as “Octo-Mom.” Case commented, “I tell students  ‘Anything you can imagine will probably happen!’”

Case has found another exciting way to maintain contact with students. Since 2000, she has taken eight different groups of students on a month-long summer program to Mwandi, Zambia, which focuses on medical and cultural experiences. “That’s an amazing teaching experience,” she said. “Just you and nine students in sub-Saharan Africa discussing health care, economics and a thousand other concerns that bubble up through their contact with local people. And there are no administrative distractions!”

Professor W. Rodger Nutt Named as James Martin Professor of Chemistry

Though his long tenure dictates he stand in the front ranks at academic processions, W. Rodger Nutt, the new James Martin Professor of Chemistry, likes to keep a low profile on campus.

He primarily tends to teaching, enjoying the challenge of communicating complex science to students in ways old and new so that they’ll understand. He approaches the task with quiet jocularity that puts them at ease, and finds his reward in their faces when puzzlement turns to enlightenment.
 
Born in Ohio, Nutt attended college in his hometown where his mother worked, Ohio Wesleyan University. He intended to study medicine, but discovered a love of chemistry instead. He enrolled at Duke University for graduate studies, and defended his Ph.D. there in early 1971. He came to Davidson that fall as a temporary replacement for an ailing chemistry faculty member. However, events conspired so that he was able to move into a tenure track position, and the rest is 38 years of Davidson history. “It was a fluke!” he confessed, but a serendipitous one for both Davidson and Nutt.

Nutt and the namesake of his chair, former N.C. Governor James G. Martin ’57, were departmental colleagues for a year before Martin left Davidson to pursue his political career. “It’s an honor to hold the chair in his name, and I’m grateful to all his many friends who created it,” Nutt said.

Nutt has helped the department through three facilities renovations, but believes that his main contribution to the program has been in computerization of the curriculum. Scientists were still calculating with slide rules when Nutt arrived, but times were changing. Duke had an early mainframe computer, and Nutt learned Fortran programming on it. He brought that interest and skill to Davidson, and remembers creating programs to calculate entropy from spectroscopic data by typing punch cards in the early 1970s to feed the college’s first mainframe in the basement of Chambers. In 1974 he received a research grant to study integration of the computer into the chemistry curriculum as a teaching aid.

The constant evolution of technology has been a challenge that Nutt has accepted as a means of helping students understand chemical concepts. Most recently he learned Java programming, and has written 30 applications that visually animate chemical and physical events at the molecular level. “Our problem has always been that you can’t physically see atomic particles, and had to conduct experiments to verify their existence,” he explained. “Using computer simulations we can now illustrate these unseen phenomena and make them more comprehensible for students.”

He continued, “Computational chemistry has emerged as an essential tool for the study of structure, stability, and reactivity of chemical compounds in all fields of chemistry.”  He noted that it is used in the development of new drugs, the study of molecular assemblies and the elucidation reaction pathways.

He regularly teaches an introductory course in principles of chemistry, and coordinates its laboratory work. He also teaches an advanced course in inorganic chemistry.

His personal research concerns preparative and structural organometallic chemistry. “I usually get into projects that take forever to do,” he joked.

He is currently working on some unanswered questions about the structure and stability of boron-nitrogen compounds that were raised by his dissertation almost 40 years ago. The work involves modeling different possible structures, and he has enlisted the aid of a colleague at Auburn University to help with the development of methodologies for the project.

Nutt is proud that Davidson has continued to attract strong students to become chemistry majors. Looking toward the future, he envisions more curricular collaboration between the chemistry and biology departments. The chemistry department will offer its first biological chemistry laboratory course next year, and Nutt believes it could lead to an eventual biochemistry major.

Cole Barton Named Inaugural C. Louise Nelson Professor of Psychology

Psychologist Cole Barton has been named the inaugural holder of the C. Louise Nelson Professorship. It was established recently by Ross W. Manire ’74 and his wife Dee to recognize the dedication to teaching demonstrated by the late Louise Nelson, a member of the economics faculty from 1964 to 1988.

Barton, too, is recognized as a dedicated teacher, and won the college’s Hunter-Hamilton Love of Teaching Award in 1999. He is patient in teaching students the painstaking methods of scholarship and research, and compassionate in welcoming them into nurturing personal relationships. One nominator for the Hunter-Hamilton Award wrote of him, “He fills students’ heads with knowledge, their hearts with a passion to learn, and their souls with a confidence in their own abilities to accomplish anything.”

Born in Rule, Texas, Barton earned his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Utah in clinical psychology. He traces his interest in psychology to childhood, and tried to read psychology texts while still in elementary school. He  remembers being troubled by homeless people he saw on the streets, and felt drawn to help people disenfranchised by others. “I don’t like to feel that there’s a distance between me and other people,” he explained.

He feels fortunate to have been accepted into the Davidson faculty in 1983, and since then to have been allowed to pursue his evolving interests in the field.

Early in his tenure he developed an interest and expertise in the family trauma surrounding missing children, the vast majority of whom are runaways rather than victims of abduction. That led to his two-year appointment as co-director at the Center for the Study of Trauma in San Francisco. While there, he extended his expertise to a regional specialty—counseling earthquake victims.

Back at Davidson he created a clinical research program for students at Northeast Medical Center in Concord. His students assisted several studies at the hospital, including on why women have induced deliveries, and improvements that exercise makes in the lives of pulmonary disease and cardiovascular rehab patients. The experience gave his students a tremendous amount of experience in research and practical knowledge about health care.

In the future Barton hopes to reactivate a study he and his students began at Northeast about doctor-patient relationships. It indicated that less experienced doctors tend to believe their patients are more engaged by technical medical data about their conditions, whereas patients actually are most satisfied with physicians who demonstrate a personal interest in them, relative to professional sophistication.

In the past three years Barton has established a senior thesis research program in Hamilton House on campus involving about a dozen students and concerning the physical and mental health stress of keeping secrets. He is grateful that the college and the NITLE Foundation have supported his investigation with powerful high-tech equipment that gives students a professional-level research experience. “If you connect your work at Davidson to the student learning experience you’ll always be supported,” he asserted.

The study employs a video camera and associated software that automatically interpret a subject’s emotional state from facial expressions and sensors attached to their bodies that record heart rate, blood pressure and perspiration. The preliminary results of research thus far on about 100 Davidson students shows that it is not the seriousness of a secret that has the strongest negative affect on personal health, but the degree to which a secret-keeper feels people will be accepting of him or her if the secret is revealed.

Barton is also excited about a reinvigoration of the college’s 25-year-old relationship with Broughton Hospital in Morganton, a state-funded facility that treats people with mental illness. The hospital administration has lately shown increased interest in using Davidson students as research assistants. “Our advanced psychology majors have tremendous skill sets, education and intellect,” Barton said. “Their ability to collect and analyze data for public health care agencies  can meet a real need.”

He is in the process of becoming a formal contracted provider with Broughton Hospital, which will allow staff to share data with him. He also hopes to make student research at Broughton the required lab session for his annual “Clinical Methods” class.

In addition to formal scholarship and research, Barton’s graduate training program  prepared him for a career in the private practice of clinical psychology, helping clients deal with emotional troubles. The college has supported him in maintaining a private practice in his office, with a modest caseload of two or three patients at a time. It’s been a departmental practice for decades, instituted by the late Prof. Gatey Workman as a means of bridging the gap between the worlds of academic theory and real life. 

For a few years Barton also served in the Health Center as a counselor to students, but found that some would broach the confidentiality of their treatment sessions in class or the hallways.

With that issue resolved, he has enjoyed a synergy between his teaching duties and his service to people with real troubles. “Psychotherapy practice gives me a better understanding of the practical problems of applying textbook methods to the real world,” Barton said. “It’s like research. I’m better able to explain to students the preparation, procedure, conceptual challenges and ethical issues of counseling patients because I am practically challenged by them rather than just studying them.”

Professor of Spanish and Department Chair Magdalena Maiz-Peña Named New Williamson Professor of Spanish

Magdalena Maiz-Peña, the college’s new William H. Williamson Professor, describes the classroom as a “sacred place” in which all things are possible. That might seem like hyperbole, but her students evidently understand it that way, too. Maiz-Peña’s teaching has been rewarded with every one of the college’s major teaching awards--the Thomas Jefferson Award in 1995, the Omicron Delta Kappa Outstanding Teacher award in 1997, the Student Government Association Faculty Award in 2004, and the Hunter-Hamilton Love of Teaching Award in 2006.

“I’ve always loved teaching,” said Maiz-Peña, who has taught at Davidson for 16 years. She suggested the inclination may spring from the sorrowful fourth grade experience of her mother’s death. “At that point, the classroom for me became a place of comfort, refuge and discovery,” she said. “I didn’t know then I would become a teacher, but I did recognize the classroom as a unique place of transformation, challenge and discovery.”

She gets emotional in expressing her gratitude for the opportunity to commune with students within college walls. “I can’t tell you how thankful I am every time I open the door to a class,” she said. “I am still nervous, excited and feel a fire inside. I love seeing student faces, hearing their voices, and recognizing moments when they make intellectual connections.”

She teaches classes in Latin American Women Writers, Contemporary Mexican and Latin American Literature, Auto/biographical Studies, and Life Writing in Latin America. Last fall she also enjoyed her first-ever team-teaching experience with Partin Associate Professor of History Jane Mangan. They received a Duke Endowment grant to teach a course they created in Latin American Urban Geographies, examining three major cities as they evolved through indigenous, colonial and modern eras. “It opened up the classroom in a different way for both of us,” Maiz-Peña said. “It invited us to reflect on our pedagogical practices and explore new directions.”

Maiz-Peña has also developed a new course on 19th-century Latin American travel narratives, and has reoriented her intermediate Spanish conversation and composition course to focus on the sometimes grisly and difficult subject of human rights in Latin America. She said, “I wondered if I was asking too much of students, but it was a subject I had in my heart and mind. However, they have embraced the material in a striking and profound way. Davidson students continually amaze me. During the team teaching course last year students had a choice to conduct it in English or Spanish, and they chose Spanish.”

Her scholarly interests focus on Hispanic women’s literature, especially its representation of “crossing borders,” such as genre and representation, and its depiction of the commonalities between people of different cultures and geographies. She has collaborated on research projects in the past with her husband, Professor of Spanish Luis Pena, and said they are currently considering a book about Latin American women writing novels, short stories and film.

Her enthusiastic involvement with community affairs also demonstrates her conviction in the importance of crossing borders. She has always maintained close ties with local Latinos, and in the past included volunteer service by students in the Latin American community as a component of her courses.In 2007 Charlotte’s Latino American Coalition honored her for contributions to the local Latino community.

She currently serves on the board of the county library system, and the Lake Norman board of the Arts and Science Council. She consulted on the Museum of the New South exhibit “From Black and White to Technicolor,” which explored the full range of ethnic diversity in the Charlotte area, and she recently participated as a presenter on the first African American Latino Unity Summit in Charlotte.

Her productive scholarship and optimistic, intense involvement with students require a tremendous amount of energy. But she really doesn’t have a choice. “I go home exhausted,” she admitted. “But I can’t see any other way of teaching than an emotional engagement with students and issues. That’s who I am. I think if I don’t feel that some day, it will be a sign that it’s time to get out!”

Assistant Professor Gerardo Marti Named King Professor of Sociology

Assistant Professor of Sociology Gerardo Marti has been named the L. Richardson “Richie” King Pre-Tenure Professor of Sociology.

“I feel very honored,” said Marti. He is in his fifth year at Davidson and will be up for tenure next year.

In addition to numerous peer-reviewed articles, reviews and other publications, Marti has published two books since coming to Davidson: A Mosaic of Believers: Diversity and Innovation in a Multiethnic Church (2005) and Hollywood Faith: Holiness, Prosperity, and Ambition in a Los Angeles Church (2008). He has a third under contract, Worship Across the Racial Divide: Notions of Race and the Practice of Religious Music in Multiracial Churches.

“I’m a learner, and I enjoy the interactive process of learning,” said Marti, whose first two books center on his ethnographic experiences in Los Angeles churches. He received his master’s and his Ph.D. degrees from the University of Southern California, after finishing his undergraduate work as valedictorian at Pepperdine University.

“I look at my own questions and the questions other people are asking, and when you supercollide them, that becomes the focus of my scholarship,” Marti said.

Marti, who was on sabbatical leave this year, received an external faculty fellowship from Rice University’s Humanities Research Center to be the Lynnette S. Autry Visiting Professor, Religious Studies/Sociology in fall 2008. Among his other professional commitments, he is on the editorial board of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. He was elected recently to the executive council of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

In teaching he focuses on the human interaction of small class groups rather than the higher-tech communications now available.

“In my classes, it’s about talking, reading, listening. It’s the richness of the conversation,” he said. Though he has a blog, he values real time and face time with his students. “Language and thinking aren’t confined to an ‘interactive space’ on the Internet. And I’m trained to be suspicious of information, while at the same time I highly prize information.”

Marti said the King Professorship will allow him to further his work in research scholarship as well as in the classroom. Marti’s Davidson students play a vital role in his scholarship research.

“I’ve always involved undergraduates in my work, and I expect that to continue,” he said. And, in both research and classroom settings, he expects to continue to work with questions of race and ethnicity, religion, ethnography, organizational analysis, age dynamics, and social order and social change.

“Going beyond the surface and connecting the intimate with the historical is what has been the real adventure for me.”

Assistant Professor Samuel Sánchez-Sánchez Named New McArthur Assistant Professor of Spanish

Samuel Sánchez-Sánchez assures his students that he’s obsessed with mortality only inside the classroom. Most of his academic research has touched on death as a lens on literary movements. It’s strictly academic, and not personal, he insists!

This newly appointed McArthur Assistant Professor of Spanish teaches a course on “Dying of Love in Medieval Spain” based on his research about expressions of personal grief in Spanish literature of the 15th and 16th centuries. During his sabbatical this spring semester he’s finishing an article that explores medieval narratives of grief within the shift from collective to individualized responses to death in 15th-century Spain, and commencing another project on what medieval wills reveal about strategies of memoralization and individual identity.

“I have always been interested in reflecting upon attitudes towards love and death,” Sánchez-Sánchez explained. The syllabus for his “Dying of Love” course includes the book “Celestina,” by Fernando de Rojas. It tells the story of two young lovers whose union ends tragically in suicide and death. Sánchez-Sánchez invites his class to consider whether the problem isn’t death, but is love instead. “Because to the author, it is love that kills, not death!” he noted.

A native Spaniard, Sánchez-Sánchez studied English literature in his hometown at the University of Huelva, with a special interest in Irish literature. He answered a call from the Red Cross in 1996-97 to teach Spanish to refugees from the Tutsi/Hutu conflict in Rwanda. He found himself involved with the assignment on deeper than an academic level. “Their stories made a big impact on me on a human level, too.” he said. “They needed me not only to teach them the Spanish language, but the culture, and I enjoyed helping them learn that aspect of my country as well.”

This experience deepened his longstanding interest in Spanish culture and literature, and prompted him to apply for graduate programs in the United States. He was accepted at the University of Michigan, and received fellowships that allowed him to earn a Ph.D. His dissertation focused on--you guessed it--how the post-mortem life of three dead bodies of celebrated aristocrats from late medieval and early modern Spain helped the elite challenge the power of the church.

His experience as a graduate student instructor at Michigan confirmed his determination to commit his career to more than just research. “It was clear to me I had to teach,” he said. “I recognized it as a sort of calling. You need to believe in what you do, and I found I could establish a good rapport with students and create a classroom environment where they were learning more than language or literature. They were able to step into new ways of seeing life and the world around them.”

After receiving his Ph.D. in 2004, Sánchez-Sánchez entered the job market, and felt very fortunate to receive an offer of a tenure-track position at Davidson. “The combination of teaching and research here suits me well,” he said. “When I first came for an interview I saw that Davidson values both good teaching and research, and encourages you to put them together in the classroom. It’s a place where you demand a lot from students, but they also demand you give them your own work to think about.”

During his first year on the job, he was assigned as resident director of the college’s five-week summer program in Spain. He shepherded two dozen students around the country for a week before they settled down for a month of intensive language study at the University of Cadiz. As much as he enjoyed showing off his native land, Sánchez-Sánchez loved reading the journals the students were assigned to write to learn their impressions of his native land. “It was just one trip, but I found that they experienced 24 different Spains!” he noted.

At Davidson he has created and teaches courses in language, literature, culture and linguistics. He has been impressed at the way students in his classes intellectually engage the material they’re assigned. They improve their language skills not through rote, but by thoughtful discussion and writing about concepts. He has found that they eagerly meet the challenge of reading original texts, and not edited or translated sources.

His appointment as a pre-tenure McArthur Professor was completely unexpected. “I was speechless when Clark Ross told me,” said Sánchez-Sánchez. “It is a humbling honor, and gives me inspiration to further dedicate myself to teaching here at Davidson.”

Posted By: Bill Giduz