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Mitchell Robert BreitwieserProfessor, English |
Mitchell Breitwieser, Professor of English, has been at Berkeley since 1979. A specialist in American literature, he has published ground-breaking books on American Puritanism and his most recent book, National Melancholy, has been praised as one of the “small number of absolutely essential books on American literature written in the last decade.” His teaching ranges over the four centuries of American literature, from the Puritans to contemporary science fiction. “Academic success,” says Breitwieser, “depends upon properly understanding [the] encounter with difficulty. Is it seen as an opportunity, a challenge, and an occasion for experiment?” Clearly his students respond to this attitude: “When the instructor lectured, my mind would buzz all day and night with ideas, my fingers would not stop hurting from the ferocious note-taking.” The Committee noted his ability to draw out complexity and intensity in his courses, as well as the depth and breadth of the classroom and mentoring experiences he provides.
Statement of Teaching Philosophy
In 1870, Henry Adams became Professor of Medieval History at Harvard, though he had never studied medieval history. “There is a pleasing excitement in having to lecture tomorrow on a period of history which I have not even heard of till today.” Henry Cabot Lodge studied with Adams that year: “In all my four years, I never really studied anything, never had my mind roused to any exertion or to anything resembling active thought until in my senior year I stumbled into the course in medieval history given by Henry Adams, who had just then come to Harvard.” He “discovered that it was the keenest of pleasures to use one’s mind,” “a new sensation,” he added. He attributed this outcome to Adams’ situation: “Mr. Adams has told me many times that he began his course in total ignorance of his own subject, and I have no doubt that the fact that he, too, was learning helped his students.”
I often worry about being prepared, so Lodge’s praise is reassuring. Being prepared for class can be less important than getting caught up in ideas during class, and that commonly happens when I’m venturing into something for the first time. I don’t mean to celebrate blissful ignorance. Certainly the teacher ought to have more experience and learning concerning how to equip and conduct the expedition than the student does. But it’s good if they travel together.
This partnership helps students to respond properly to intellectual obstacles. A teacher’s conclusions can seem to have arrived effortlessly, but such facility can reinforce students’ feelings that, because they are struggling, there must be some personal deficiency, and such feelings reduce the chance that the intellectual problem will be solved, because academic success depends upon properly understanding the encounter with difficulty. If it is seen as an opportunity for intellectual experiment, students are liable to become invigorated and adventurous. But seeing it as the consequence of personal inadequacy dispirits students, leading many to quit, or to content themselves with the modest efforts that they come to accept as their best endeavor. Such outcomes are particularly tempting at Berkeley, where the institutional reputation can make even the hardiest egotists suspect that they snuck in when someone was looking the other way. Letting one’s own ideation show during class helps students to engage creatively with their own hard, but bracing, tasks.
This pedagogical attitude is less suitable to classes that require me to transmit information concerning literary history and critical method, lecture courses introducing students to the English major, for example. But even in these there arrive experimental moments that leaven the hour by introducing some eventfulness into the transmission.