My "philosophy of teaching" is fundamentally Confucian: a belief that knowledge and wisdom transmitted from generation to generation is the basis for human society and culture; that minds can be improved, mostly through self-cultivation but also with some help from outside; that educated people make up a community that should be mutually supportive and respectful. My model for all this is the greatest man I have studied with, the late Peter Boodberg of the Oriental Languages Department.

If I list what seem to me to be the qualities of a good teacher, I find my own record by these criteria badly faulted. A good teacher is supposed to know all the students in class by name shortly after the class begins: it takes me a much longer time. I am not particularly good at teaching by the "Socratic method," letting the students arrive at important truths and formulations on their own, through skillful questioning; I am not even that accomplished at getting a discussion going in class, one in which everybody is involved.

My strengths are probably in having a real liking and respect for students, letting them realize that we are involved in a collective enterprise, trying to learn about and understand Asian art, and that although I'm farther along in that enterprise, we are on the same track. I try to lecture in an open and relaxed manner so as to create an atmosphere of lively and unthreatening conversation instead of stiff, formal presentation. I slip into the lectures revealing anecdotes about people and issues in the field, to engage the students in its human side as well as its academic side. I try to make all this sound spontaneous and unrehearsed—what one student has reportedly described as "history being written in the classroom"—although in fact it usually takes considerable time to prepare the lectures.

One of the requisites of good teaching, one that underlies all the others, is simply being there: spending enough time with students; being around when they want to talk with you; not arranging a three-day work schedule (Tuesday to Thursday). The idea that teaching time must be cut to a minimum if one is to get research and writing done is a pernicious idea, invoked to excuse part-time teaching; the really productive scholars I've known don't usually invoke it.

Especially with undergraduates, who can be easily intimidated by professors, I make it a point to be accessible for their queries. I have usually tried to schedule my lectures before lunch or late in the day so that the classroom, and the students, will be free for a half-hour or hour of discussion after the lecture. I always let students choose their own term paper topics, in consultation with me, and always read the papers myself. I have transformed the room next to my office into a study room where graduate students (and serious undergrads on occasion) can use my own books, photographs, and research notes. This has the effect, I think, of breaking down some of the barriers between professor and students in their research.

Good teachers try to make students aware of the issues and controversies in their fields, and even while arguing for their own viewpoints on these issues, they try to be fair to others. Good teachers present their fields as fluid, dynamic arenas within which they and others are trying to make some sense, and they encourage undergraduates to believe that students themselves, even though new or only peripherally committed, can often make significant contributions§however small§to the field.