Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
The Human Experience Inside the Humanities at Stanford University
Humanexperience.stanford.edu
I want to preface this by repeating something I said quite a bit this summer, which is I've
always had this fantasy, or I've long had this fantasy of sitting in for Charlie Rose.
So I want to thank Ellen Woods for making my dream come true.And the first thing I have
to say is we corresponded a little bit as we started talking about this panel, so last
night was the first time that I met Eric and Mark in person. But I didn't realize you two
have never met in person either before then.
We met last night for the first time.
Yes. So I want to start by giving some background information...helping introduce and set the
stage for how this collaboration came to happen. Mark, can you tell me a little bit about your
background - where did you do your graduate work and when were you with the IHUM program?
I came here in 2001 and was here until 2003 and I came here from Michigan State University,
so my dissertation was turned in by my advisor as I was driving out here. So it was immediately
from the doctoral program directly here. And before that I did my field in Roman History
and Hellenistic History as well. And then I did an MA at the University of South Carolina
in Late Antiquity. So that's the - I pretty much came here right after, or right during
the completion of my degree.
Right. And how many years were you with IHUM?
Two years, yes. Right before the third year regretfully in a lot of ways, but we'll talk
in a bit...
It's hard to leave, but when opportunity knocks, right? How about you, Eric?
I was here the very first year, '97-'98 and I still remember getting the letter for - it
was a letter, it wasn't an email, from Ian Morris . My wife was in Greece leading the
summer session at the American school and we got a notice from Ian saying come on home
and then for the summer come on out to California. We were jumping around screaming, we were
so excited that they thought something had gone wrong in our apartment. So, it was absolutely
wonderful. My background - I actually grew up in California and did undergrad at Dartmouth,
Master's at Yale, Ph.D. at Penn in ancient history and my specialty is contacts in the
ancient world, mostly between Western and Eastern Mediterranean, so I actually fit perfectly
into the course that Ian Morris was teaching at the time, which then became Ancient Empires.
So, but coming here, we see this as the big break. I had been adjuncting since '91. In
fact, in '97 before I got here I gave a paper at a conference about 7 years in the life
of an adjunct, in which I just put all my woes out there. At the time I was teaching
at six universities in one semester and earning less than $20,000, and called myself a "Roads
Scholar" because I was on the road all the time. But coming here, I was only here for
one year because Diane, my wife, had a position at Cincinnati and she took a leave of absence
to come out with me so we were only here for one year. We went back to Cincinnati and soon
thereafter I got the first job offer I'd ever gotten at GW and went off. And it's now been
11 years and I'm the chair of the department, the head of the institute, basically everything
I knew I could do but nobody was giving me a shot to do it, came true because I suddenly
had teaching at Stanford on my resume. And they figured I must be okay. So with this,
we say that IHUM was my big break, absolutely.
You mentioned Ian Morris and I know he played a role in the serendipity of you writing together.
But how did working with Ian Morris impact your experience in IHUM?
I'll just say that Ian sends his regret that he's in Hong Kong, so he did really want to
be here. And I'll start out and jump in, but I think what, Ian inspired me immediately.
I didn't know it at the time, but he was using the IHUM experience thinking through some
of the ideas for the book has recently come out, "Why the West Rules for Now." So it's
very rare among ancient historians in the circles that I worked within to ask such huge
questions. You know, how does the ancient world relate to now and not to just take this
in terms of Western traditions, not just look at it in a very focused sense that way. And
so he was asking questions about inequality across space and time, modern versus ancient,
and finding the roots in the ancient world. And I had never seen an ancient historian
work at that level, raising those types of questions. And so his lectures, as we were
talking about a little bit last night, we both try very hard to emulate him in a lot
of ways because this was students on the edge of their seats and how many hundreds in the
larger lecture halls and not so we can say the cliches of the passion and knowledge all
of that, but just that this type of huge questions that ancient historians find ridiculous to
ask, and he was asking them and having great fun with it. And the students just loved it.
And so, that's what I've taken away from that teaching is to try to raise the big questions
as well and talk a little bit more about that in current teaching. And it was the same for
me. When Ian was teaching basically the ancient world course at the time I remember saying
to him somebody really needs to write a textbook for this course. And, lo and behold, who knew
later we would do it. But I still use Ian as a role model, absolutely. The way he could
come in twice a week for 50 minutes and just, like you said, mesmerize the students. And
now I find myself in my classroom, my classes will range from 15 students to 138. I've got
right now in Intro to Archeology, 138 students. And finally, I have two TAs for the first
time who are running their own discussion sessions, so I get to be in. I get to come
in twice a week for 75 minutes and entertain and then leave the rest of it to the TAs,
so like finally I'm Ian. Oh, My God, it's only taken ten years. But everything that
I used here will get to other things we taught. I mean, part of the IHUM experience was teaching
stuff I had never studied, which was a real growing experience. But, to be here and to
be with one of the people who's still cutting edge and with this how the West was run, it
shows that he was thinking about huge topics even way back when. So it's very much a learning
experience for us, I think both of us.
You say you've got two TAs now...do you find that your relationships with the people you
are teaching with, are these graduate students or lecturers? Do you find that your relationship
with Ian or the way you worked with Ian and the way you worked with IHUM informed?
Yes, even though it's been more than 10 years since I was in their position I still remember
that. And the way that I was treated at IHUM is the way I treat them. They are, you know,
real people with talents and trying to make use of them.
Yeah, I don't have graduate students but I'd say that from day one, just to piggyback on
this, that Ian's sense of reality within the group was something that we all very much
appreciated. There was no, it was not down, we just all shared ideas and had a great time
in our meetings.
But there was more than that too, the whole IHUM group, I remember the people, we were
there together the first year, you know, and others I can see you in the audience, it's
just absolutely wonderful. And some of us have stayed in touch. It's been a bonding
experience. Two years ago somebody came walking down the hall at GW and said, "Hey, how ya
doing?" And I'm like, "Good. Who are you?" And he says, "You don't know me, but I was
IHUM 6 years after you." And I'm like, "Oh, my God, let's go to lunch." And so there's
been this camaraderie, a group within a group. And even the ancient historians, we know most
of the people who came after us - Heather, Rebecca and Emma and Rob and it's kind of
handing on the torch, you know, "Oh, you worked with Ian and then you worked with the other
Ian." So it's been an experience for a generation now.
That's great. So, I'm curious. Aside from Ancient Empires, what other IHUM courses did
you teach?
I did Finding Voices, Forging Selves. I don't know that anyone else in here taught the same
time I did with Hester and Herbie. And so I did that one for one of the terms. And I
guess really learned how to teach a text that I talked to several of you about just last
night - Apuleius, The Golden ***, [??] - the most easy texts to teach and at the same time
one of the most hard and difficult texts to teach. And we had a great time in there. I
was also teaching Virginia Wolf's To the Lighthouse, which was a wonderful stretch for an ancient
historian. I mean the T.S. Elliott and that I could deal with, but the Virginia Wolf,
that was, of course, as we all know, these things stretched us quite a bit. And the other
one was The Origins: Contested Identities. Again, I don't see anyone who taught that
at the same time with the other Ian Hodder and Michael Shanks. I think one of my best
memories from that course was just the way that both of them as lecturers that were complete
opposites. I mean Ian Hodder would come in with the old fashioned projector. This was
not, I mean refusing to use Power Point, I don't know what he does now, somebody can
enlighten me on this, but the old projector where he would literally have the sheet of
paper and hand-written, and going down like this, and would talk in a very low tone. People
who know his work are actually sometimes shocked by the difference between Ian on paper and
as the lecturer. But in spite of all of that, again the students were actually mesmerized
by his lectures. So, often in reading his notes the students just hung on every word.
Then Michael Shanks, on the other hand, every lecture he gave had to have movies going on
behind him as he spoke and complete theater in the best sense of the term. Total opposites,
but very effective ways of communicating. And I'd love to get into this now with discussions
that probably happened at a lot of colleges, the luddites versus the technology people
or whatever. And it just seems to be so ridiculous that on one level I've seen both work so well
- the people who are just not into using the technology constantly and those who use if
very effectively. So both of them as real teachers and communicating which far transcended
any of the media they were using or the approach they were taking. And so I also, one thing
I'll just share with you. Origins actually helped me get my first job but I didn't know
it at the time, I learned this several years later, that a dean in my college I'm at was
wanting to put together an interdisciplinary origins course, which brought together natural
scientists and philosophers and theologians and historians, in fact together, and discussed
some of these types of issues. They didn't tell me this at the time because the dean
had it in his mind and it wasn't getting too far with several other constituents, we'll
say, in the college. And then as soon as I got there they say okay, you taught this class
Origins, would you like to do this and I said, "No, I do not want to teach that." And so
then they asked me for several more years - "No." And so finally they said "Would you
like to teach this course in January in the Galapagos Islands?" It was a great experience.
I loved it. And I'm teaching every other January now.
In terms of what I taught since I was only here one year I only had a chance to teach
one other and to be perfectly honest I couldn't remember what it was. I remember what I taught
but I couldn't remember the name of it, so I'm glad you have the old course catalogs
because I went over this morning and looked - Great Works...Great Works. How could I forget
that with Cheri in charge of it? Now I remember teaching Toni Morris's Beloved which, for
an ancient historian, that's a stretch. But I got so much out of it. It was absolutely
amazing. And that was perhaps the highlight of that fall career - or the fall quarter
for me. And I remember sitting out with the students outside one day and just going around
talking about it. And that, for me, epitomized the whole experience. For one thing, Stanford
students, as I tell mine today, Stanford students are the brightest I've ever taught. But to
be out there in the sunshine in this gorgeous weather, to be talking about Beloved, evoking
the imagery and trying to really get at the nuances was just absolutely amazing. And that
was my first couple of weeks here, I hadn't even gotten to my Ancient Empires. It was
absolutely amazing.
You both mentioned that the schools that you are currently teaching at - you're at Grove
City College, as I mentioned, which is a small school. I had two cousins who attended Grove
City, and you're at George Washington. Can you tell me a little bit about where you're
teaching, what your students are like, what you're institution is like and how IHUM prepared
you for that?
Sure, you have the Grove City College is about 50 miles north of Pittsburgh, a small liberal
arts school, about 2500 students. And actually, one of the comments I was going to make in
our discussion this morning, which maybe we could back to some of that as well, actually
my best students in my required humanities course are the engineers. And I'm not just
talking performance, I'm talking across the board in really embracing the material. So
I have a very different type of experience with that because in many cases they follow
up to take Iliad and the Odyssey independent studies with me. So I have a different type
of maybe the small liberal arts college, might have some different type of situation than
some of you might have had with that. The school I teach at is loosely affiliated with
the Presbyterian Church USA. But there's no faith statement for faculty or students. But
it does have, it does have a bit more of an evangelical flavor perhaps among the student
body. That doesn't go across the board but I'd say, you know, compared to some liberal
arts schools you might have that. Our biggest challenge right now as an institution - and
listening to Andy I was shocked by some of the challenges you're facing as well - but,
I mean for us, when I got there our acceptance rate of students was about 30%. Now it's at
about 60%. So over the course, it's a selective school and I have about 120-150 students per
semester. Four different courses. Thankfully, I had, again, IHUM. These are my crib notes,
some of these are the lectures there. But 150-160 students per semester. But generally
speaking, very hard working, often very engaged, smart students. And I do enjoy it there. There's,
of course, the ups and downs but I'm on film so I'll give you something of the whitewashed
version of what it's like teaching in a small liberal arts college. But that's been my experience
so far. I get to know the students very well.
How about you?
Well, winding up at GW after having taught at I think eleven different institutions,
one of the things that I found out is that most of the students are students no matter
where they are. They've got the same problems, same pressures as we mentioned this morning.
At GW I feel very much at home. Not only are my colleagues very good, but I was actually
born there. Literally, I was born at GW Hospital. That's actually how I knew I got the job.
I gave my job talk and then they would say "Here's Eric Cline coming here for Cincinnati,"
and I said, "Thank you very much, it's nice to be back." And they all looked at me because
they had never met me before. And I told them 40 years ago I was born across the street
and they started laughing and I thought, "I've got this job!" Sure enough, it happened. So
I'm very much right at home there, but also it's very good for someone who's come out
of IHUM and an interdisciplinary background. Because my department that I'm now the Chair
with, we teach not only ancient history but also some archeology, Greek, Latin, Hebrew,
Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. So the name of the department has been changed a couple
times and I was able just now to change it again last year. We are now the Department
of Classical and Semitic Languages and Civilizations. Which, for me, this is exactly what I do but
also what I think everyone should do in the ancient world where you're not just a classics
department, you're not just a near east department. Of course we stole the name from Harvard and
UCLA and Chicago and such which have Semitic Languages. We just added classics there as
well. And it's been very rewarding to watch things grow. I give you one example...I'm
the archeology advisor and when they asked me a year after I got there, back in 2001,
would I be the advisor I said, "Well, I don't know. How many majors are there in archeology?"
And they said there were eight and I said "Eight per year?" and they said "No, eight!"
This is a school who admits 2500 people per year. Like okay, eight majors is fine. We
now have between 15-20 per year. So you can make tremendous strides just using what you've
learned at IHUM and everywhere else. So it's not actually me. Anybody else could ***
them from that position and teach them, so with the proper training it's possible. I'm
having a grand old time there, needless to say.
Thanks a lot. So you're at different institutions, you did not teach at IHUM together, you did
not meet in the physical world until last night. How did you come to write a book together?
I'm not sure.
I'll take a stab at that. A year or two after I left here I approached Ian Morris with the
idea of turning the Ancient Empires class into a textbook. There's a whole series of
reasons I wanted to do that and we might come back to that. So I approached him with the
idea and he was enthusiastic about it from the start. So he gave full permission to go
full steam ahead with that. And then I approached Cambridge with a proposal and they immediately
said they liked the idea, the large question this is raising, if there's a real need for
this among the colleges that have ancient world classes. A lot of people complain about
not having a textbook they like that raises the type of questions. They said a textbook
like this, we'd like to have a team working on this. I'm a late Roman historian specifically,
we want a team working on this. So I went back to Ian and told him about this and immediately
he said no doubt about this. Eric Cline is who you're going to want to work with on this.
He'll bring in the Bronze Age, he'll bring in every era and expertise up to where yours
really starts in a real defensible way. And so I just sent an email out of the blue to
Eric. I have all these, by the way. I've read them over a little bit in refreshing for this,
but I just said "You don't know who I am," but I just mentioned the name Ian Morris,
IHUM. He got back and said "I've got several other projects I'm working on right now. Give
me some time." And I think it took maybe about another day - about 12 hours later he's back
saying "Yes, this looks like a great idea." And he'll talk about this later, I'm sure.
But he had done collaborative work before and had a very clear idea in his mind about
what kinds of things are involved in this. We sent the proposal back to Cambridge and
they said, "Yes, this is exactly what we want." And we took off from there. And we've had
several times I've been in the DC area in the summer and wanted to meet Eric and I would
write him an email and he's say, "I'd love to meet up, but I'm going to be in Israel
excavating for the summer." So that's kind of been a pattern over several summers. So
we've made the effort in that way, but it was certainly delightful last night to meet
somebody you've been working together on a project together collectively for some time.
But that's my side of things.
And it's funny, too, because I had to Google him before I got here to make sure I recognized
him. It worked. Your picture does you justice. What Mark doesn't realize is that in the intervening
12 hours I had contacted Ian and said "Ian, I think you need to write this with Mark."
And Ian had written back saying "No, I already told him you would do it." So I wanted to
double-check with Ian that he wouldn't be the one as he was busy. Now we know he was
on his own projects. So once I had the green light from Ian to say yes to this, then I
got back and said yes and we were off and running with Ian's blessing. If any of you
take a look at the book, then we're indebted to any number of IHUMers who helped us out
with chapters of either before we started writing or drawing, and so the dedication
is, correct me if I'm wrong, "Dedicated to our families, to our students, past, present
and future, and to the whole IHUM gang." Because this is a whole IHUM project. It's like getting
up for the Oscars saying "I couldn't have done this without the team." That's pretty
much it, we couldn't have done it without the team. So, anyway it was very interesting
working long distance and Mark is going to be modest here, but the whole project was
Mark's idea and Mark did 90% of the work. He did all the writing, he did all the research.
When I joined it was mostly just to fine tune and to edit and to make sure the Near Eastern
part that I knew about was correct. So it's all his basically. I came into it, not at
the last moment, we did put the project together, but I regard this as Mark's book that I helped
out on if you want to put it that way. And it's only through marketing at Cambridge,
who I got really annoyed at, that my name is on first. It should be his name that's
on first absolutely. It's all of his. But this is where you run up against marketing
for the big presses as they have their own ideas of - we didn't pick the cover photo.
I'm not sure...
The only thing we did say was "Don't use something Roman." It's Roman..can you get more Roman
than that?
Exactly. So they picked the cover photo, they basically picked the title, the final result,
they picked the order of the authors, I mean it was pretty much out of our hands in a way,
which was rather unique for me. But the collaboration process could not have been easier. I mean,
I'll write a book with you any day. And I've done a number of other collaborative projects
also, but most of them I'm face-to-face with people who are co-directors of the excavations.
But this is not the only time I've written a book not having met the person. In fact
this is the second time. The other one I've now written two books with her and have yet
to meet her. But in that case it's rather interesting because she's a children's author.
And I was put together with her when Oxford was putting together "The World in Ancient
Times" series and she and I did ancient Egypt together. And what I did was feed here the
facts and she then wrote it for young adults - for sixth graders in fact. And the whole
idea was to aim it at California and Texas. So we got along so well and I thought that
she did such a good job that afterward she said, "What else shall we do?" And I said,
"Well, we need to do a book on Troy." She was like great, and we did a book on the Trojan
War and she pitched it to all of her contacts. Lo and behold we wrote the young adults book
called, Digging for Troy, which came out last year. Wonderful little book. She did most
of it, I fed her the facts and all that and, again, I've never met her. And at this point
I'm a little afraid to. What if we don't get along? I mean, fortunately Mark and I seem
to be getting along. Anyway, this is what's going to happen more and more. This is the
Internet age, the connection and the speed. I mean, we would go back and forth on a chapter
in under a week, back and forth and back and forth. Previously there would be letters that
would take six months to go back and forth. So I think we're actually going to see more
of this. And it works. It's easy, you know. And now you can Skype, you can email, you
can do instant video messaging, whatever. I think it's just going to get more.
I want to go back to the book you mentioned on as you were making this connection to start
your collaboration both of you had reached out to Ian Morris and he got you into the
project and helped bring the two of you together. And of course we know that now Ian Morris
is writing his own book, which is also based on Ancient Empires. And the third time that
I taught Ancient Empires - we talked about this a little bit last night - I was in Ian's
office and I saw the box of his book and I said, "How come we're not using your book
for the class?" And he's like, "I don't want to use my book for the class." So my next
question for you is, what was the reasoning that went into deciding to write a textbook
for this kind of course, and how is writing a book, or how's composing this book, which
is essentially a textbook, based on teaching a class different from writing a book which
is sort of based on a long period of cumulative research into a period of historical trajectories?
Well, see, I think it's different at every level. Not just the proposal. By the way,
if anyone's interested I did bring copies of our initial proposal to Cambridge. It's
not often that you see what a proposal looks like for a textbook and it's not the same
format as you getting a monograph published. So if any would like to see that I've got
some copies up here.
But I think one of the things we're trying to accomplish in this is it's a very untextbooky
textbook. And so it's drawing on the large questions that IHUM raises, which is our starting
point here. It's not really a monograph, it's not really a textbook, but there is a strong
theme and argument going through the whole thing. And so I would love to see it starting
maybe something of a paradigm shift toward this type of writing. Because I found the
students actually engage with this a heck of a lot better than they do the huge textbook
which is trying to be comprehensive. The type of thing you hate assigning in classes, the
things your students hate you assigning in classes, in large classes you feel you have
to sometimes because you don't want to go into all the details. And so from the get-go
I think we wanted this to be something which is going to be used in classes. Which is quite
literally taking the IHUM experience and the questions, the type of questions raised here,
and putting it out in a larger setting.
So I don't think there was really any other genre that we could work with it other than
textbook, but it's not really a textbook. So there're several differences we might come
to along those lines as well. And so that's, I don't know if you want to jump in at this
point -
Yeah, I was reading on the airplane coming here and I got about four chapters in and
I went - you know this is pretty good. This will make a very good textbook. It will not
only make a good textbook for an introductory course on the ancient world, which I have
taught before, but also for upper level seminars. Because you can come at it from a couple different
levels. But it's not just throwing facts at the students, like they did in Western Civ
when I had to teach it 38 times in 5 years. This is throwing facts at them with a purpose.
Each chapter begins with three or four questions that we're asking them to think about while
they are reading it, but it's also, as Mark said, it's thematic. It's the IEMP going through
where there's a theme to the whole book. And you're looking at it as a way to investigating
the past and asking and answering specific questions, and seeing if there's a cycle,
if there's a rise and fall and exactly what's going on. So there's a method to the madness.
You're not just learning the facts to regurgitate them on the test. You are learning them so
you can actually answer questions. But also, as I said, this is an answer to those saying
why should we study history, why should we study humanities. Because you want to be an
educated citizen of the world, right? You need to know what Socrates said, what he thought.
You need to know what Plato did or you're not going to understand. People get up on
the floor of the Senate every year and quote the ancient authors. And if you don't know
them, you're not that educated. Now that's not here or there. It doesn't mean you can't
go into business and make millions, but to be an educated citizen of the world you do
need these. This is why humanities is important, right? And I think that this textbook is one
way to get towards that. There's a reason for it.
Some of the key themes we're exploring in here are definitions of freedom, order, justice
and one of the things, one of the most enjoyable parts of the whole project, is imagining how
students are going to engage with these types of large questions. In a completely different
way than polarized political discussions they are used to. It opens up the frame of discussion,
I would say, quite broadly. So that was what we pitched to the marketers as well. This
is going to have students talking about justice, order and freedom more so than, you know,
"Who was Ashurbanipal?" Either that's going to be there, like I said, these things have
to be there, that's in there as well.
That's actually pretty fascinating right there.
Very fascinating. Yes.
You say Ashurbanipal and all three of those lean forward a little bit.
But to talk about what Ashurbanipal did in context of what did it mean for freedom and
justice and all that.
Ashurbanipal was a Syrian King way back when.
So it seems to me that the practice that I guess, what I hear you talking about this
sort of argumentation and the sort of nuance, it feels discussion-sectiony to me. Can you
tell us a little bit about connecting the experience of teaching with the practice of
writing something together? What do you think is the key to harmoniously collaborating or teaching?
One thing I want to respond to the first part here. Several weeks back the marketers, just
before this came out, the marketers from Cambridge contacted us and we had about a 45-minute
discussion in terms of how we're going to pitch this book, who's is it going to go to.
This is very different from monograph publishing, to talk with the whole marketing team. And
to your first point about this - this feels discussion/section. You know most of the time
that an ancient world class is taught it's not going to be taught in discussion sections
per se. And so really what we imagine with this book is, even in lecture - even, you
know, professor giving a lecture arguing with the book. So we get to where that discussion
is going on with the students. We make it pretty small comparatively for an ancient
history survey, which are often five, six, seven hundred pages. So they can have time
to go read a lot of sources. It's debate and argument all the way through. Now thankfully
that was not true of our experience together. Our experience together was very harmonious,
I think, in terms of the collaboration of this. I'm trying to remember of interpretive,
where some of the interpretive differences and issues might have come up a little bit
in a more - I know that, of course, the earlier chapters on the Bronze Age, there's much more
- since you had indicated - reworking the whole framework of chapters and that type
of thing, which I think worked extremely well. But as far as our collaboration and working
together, it was an extremely harmonious process. That's my recollection of it. I'm trying to
think of some interpretive issues that we might have struggled with for a little bit
and -
There aren't that many you can have. Even so, we would gently say to each other, and
I would say that's the key - civility. When I was reading something and I disagreed with
it, I would write back a very gentle note, "I think you might want to consider to say
it this way," rather than "I can't believe you were so stupid as to say this," you know.
Not that I ever thought that. But really to say, you know, there's an alternate way maybe
you might consider this, or something like that. And that's the same in team teaching
as well, not just team writing. But everybody's got their own opinion. There's only so much
you can do with the facts, you really can't change what happened in antiquity. You can
change your interpretation of it and everybody has their own interpretation and they may
well be welcome to it. But at least to be open to it. And that's going to come up in
class as well. So my policy, for example, in class, whether I'm using my textbook or
not is never to say, "No, you're wrong," to a student. I would say, "Well, that's interesting.
Not that I agree with it, but it's interesting." And go on. So I'm going to be using this textbook
as I do in most cases, to have a great discussion-based class. Greek history, Roman History, ancient
world, you don't just have to throw the facts out at them, but to get them to talk about
it they're going to learn the facts along the way. And so I thought this was a really
useful way to get at this. But again, you have to be very civil in the class.
And anybody who's done team teaching, which is all of us, knows the importance of civility
in any type of meeting. You talked about the difference, and thank you for bringing the
book proposal, I didn't think to ask that - that's great. The difference between publishing
this kind of work as opposed to publishing a monograph or as opposed to publishing your
doctoral dissertation, can you talk a little bit about those differences - about how it's
different?
Is it Carlos? I think Carlos mentioned data. This is a first type of what I had to go to.
I had to find out very specifically to give it to, to get to Cambridge. How many people
are using this style? How many people teach in ancient history survey? So kind of the
initial phase of research really was getting out there. How many classes are there out
there that could feasibly use this? What textbooks are they using? So it was just charts, you
know, just kind of putting that together to say here's what's actually happening in the
classroom. So, yeah, I'll admit, I hate gathering data. So your point, that's one of the big
things I'm taking away from that session earlier that's still coming through my mind, I hope
comes back over and over again, is asking up what we say and I could have told them
anything about the usefulness. In the grand scheme of things this book so important because,
and as a textbook division, you know, this would not have even - it would have been rejected
immediately. What they wanted to know - the data, the market, is this going to be marketable,
who's going to buy it, and beyond just - of course everyone has to fill out the marketing
questionnaire for a monograph. But here it was at a much higher level, pitched at a much
higher level. And they really wanted to know, yeah, who, what, when, where, do you have
other colleagues who expressed an interest in this? Who are they, can we contact them
to talk about it? So it was very market-driven in a way. I don't think that, not at the level
that at least the first monograph I did was certainly not in this same old -- so that
was the first type of thing.
There's a great difference between types of books you're writing and the proposals. Each
one, obviously, is different. But I would say there's a difference between turning your
dissertation into a monograph, that's one scholarly source. There's another writing
textbooks, so you have to know the writing books for a popularizing audience. And each
of these are very different and the proposals are very different. And the questions the
editors and the marketing team ask are very different. And you have to justify them in
very different ways. So, for example, the scholarly ones, they are not usually asking
what's the market out there, they're asking if you got a subvention to help them publish
it.
If you've got a ...?
Subvention, can you give $5,000 towards the publication? And then we're only going to
publish 700. And that's that, as opposed to other ones where they say well, how much of
an advance do you want? And we can only publish 10,000, is that okay? You know, so it's very,
very different, but the questions they ask then come down on one hand quite different;
on the other hand quite similar. Because in the end they don't want to go broke. They
also want to know that you're respected. That they're hiring somebody whose opinion matters
and that's going to do good research. So in all the different proposals there are a couple
of things that remain the same. And yet they're each very different. I remember one where
I turned in a proposal and the editor said with kind of a sneer, "We are not X press,"
I won't name them, but they said, "You need to up your writing." I said, "Really, because
I just dumbed it down from the other one." And they were like, "No, we are not that press."
And so it goes. You have to judge not only the ultimate audience, but the audience at
the presses as to whether it's going to get accepted or not.
And then you have to be willing to go with the flow. I mean everybody has their job and
when they send it out to the reviewers, like they asked us for the names of three reviewers,
got sent out. We still don't know who the reviewers were. But it's the reviewers job
to come back being critical. And then it's our job to respond to the criticism in order
to show that yes, we respect what they have to say. But we're still convinced that we're
right, so we're going to go on that way. So, everybody's got a role. And then it continues
right through the writing. The editors and copy editors are each getting paid to do a
job and you've got to respect that. And you can't get all high and mighty and say, "My
writing is sacrosanct, you can't touch it." But no, these editors are pretty good and
they know what they're doing. And they might not be specialists in their field, but they've
edited 50 other books, so go with it. Be receptive. And you know what, it's probably going to
make your book better, which it did.
This is the perfect segue into my next question before we open it up, which is what advice
do you have for other IHUM fellows or former IHUM fellows who are interested in doing this
sort of collaborative writing, in coming together and working on producing something based on
the experience of teaching?
I'd say at an obvious and basic level to ummm, if you had a great experience with a team
of fellows, you maybe haven't been in contact with them and maybe this very setting is facilitating
that, why not? Look at some of that being there, I mean when I was here there was a
different setup of courses and all that. Why not get in contact with these, a group of
the people and say why not? Why can't we take that course that many people put a lot of
thought and effort into and it had its time at Stanford, that's fine. It's not being taught
anymore for whatever reason - faculty availability, whatever - and now let's get that course,
that approach. Let's get that out there a little more broadly. So I would say that the
IHUM fellows is really the first, the really obvious place, that it's going to have to
start there. And yeah, I would love to see that type of thing because we all put so much
into the discussions. I just got to hear last night about how much was put into IHUM even
before it had its beginnings with its conversations over the courses of so many years and all
that. Why not? Why not take this type of thing out there. And let me just put one fear that
I don't know how much this applies to many in here, but when I started on this project
I did not have tenure. And Beatrice Rehl, she's the famous classical editor, editor
of classics at Cambridge, she called me and said, "You realize that this particular book
might not count for tenure decision?" And I had to explain to her a little about the
nature of my institution. I published a book. Fifty percent of the faculty where I teach
don't. You know, they define themselves as a teaching college. That's not going to be
an issue in my tenure decision. So, I don't know how much that applies to anyone else
here, but I felt I really did have a little bit more leeway because I wasn't getting the
monograph out, first monograph from the dissertation, getting the next one out. I really loved this
project and so I didn't want to have to be going off on another research project at this
time just for the sake of getting tenure. And so for me I guess it was a little bit
easier than I realize it's going to be in some programs where you can't just thumb your
nose at the whole tenure process at a large research institution. You can't do it. And
so maybe a team that has that combination of people and different kinds of backgrounds
where you're, people maybe in the small liberal arts college where I teach at might get the
whole project going. And they will put a good bit into the formative side of this whereas
somebody going through the tenure process doesn't have the time or the energy to be
able to do all of that right then.
So a collaborative project, Eric mentioned, doesn't have to be 50/50. It doesn't have
to be 60/40. I think that what was added to this book in readability, again Eric's being
modest saying 90% mine. I mean he says it's readable - thanks, Eric, it's readable. It's
not me. I'm trained to write in monograph constipated style, but that's, I think a combination
of different people maybe on the same teaching team, different backgrounds who can bring
in not just we'll say, kind of the energy and expertise, but also they're at different
places, different stages and all of that. I think that would be great if more people
could take advantage out there, more people take advantage of the whole IHUM thing. Because
so much has gone into that. And to see a course that's gone, right, it doesn't have to, I
mean here's a course I hope that's just going to keep on making the questions or still going
to be there at the small colleges, at other colleges. Maybe I'm sounding a little bit
too much like an IHUM evangelist, perhaps, but at all events that the type of thing I
think is exciting. I'd like to see that.
So - the idea is that we take what we did here at Stanford and IHUM and disseminate
it to the rest of the world. Because it worked pretty well here. If it works here well it
should work pretty well everywhere else and that's a new way of looking at it. But yes,
some of the things that Mark said are very relevant. And not just of the tenure process.
As you go along, I mean, I'm finding this right now going up for full professor, they're
now saying, what have you done? What was solo? What was co-authored? What's a textbook and
what is a monograph? And that still it resonates -- it's not going to stop. So you have to,
but I've kind of done what you do, but you know what, I going to do the projects that
I'm interested in, that I love, because that's where my passion is. And you what? It you
guys don't like it, well in that case I'm in trouble, right? Because they're like sure,
and what have you solo authored. I'm like ohhhhh, so this is going to be something to
keep in mind. On the other hand, working in collaboration really does work. And they don't
have to be, say you're writing a history textbook, one of your co-authors doesn't have to be
a history person. They can be an English person who is very good at writing. Because one thing
that we've got, not just our profession but others, where we're very good usually at writing
for our peers, our colleagues. But I give it to my father and he's like, "I have no
idea what you're talking about. Can't you write it so I'll understand it?" And that's
where bringing in a collaborator can say, "Wow, now put what I've done into English
so either my grandmother can understand it or a student can understand it. And that's
where it's very hard to do it yourself. Because you can't take a step back, somebody else
takes it and goes off and running, right?
So we did that pretty well on this. And this children's author that I worked with, she
did extremely well because she's like here's what you have to do for a 12-year old. Like
wow, there's no way I could have ever write like that. It's a special way to do it.
You mentioned the family connection. I'll just through this out there real quick. Before
I came here I was having a conversation with my parents who have never understood. I'm
first generation in terms of going to college. My parents didn't go to college. My first
monograph they got three pages in and you know, sort of like, "What were you doing all
that time?" And they just - but then this one they read and they said, "Mark, we understand
what you're doing." And they said, "Now this inspires us to go back and read your first
one because we think we're going to understand a little bit more about how you think now."
So I think, you know, just in terms of that was sort of exciting across generations. And
if that can happen outside of that with others who might not be reading this type of thing,
I think it can be a segue into it.
Thank you so much.