Faculty Interview - Vanessa B. Gorman
Department of History
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06/03/2019
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This is an interview with Prof. Vanessa B. Gorman
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- [00:00:05.450]I'm Vanessa Gorman.
- [00:00:06.650]I am the only person, pretty much, who teaches
- [00:00:10.330]ancient history here at UNL, which means I do
- [00:00:12.720]all the Greek and Roman history.
- [00:00:15.830]I've done research in archaic and classical Greek history.
- [00:00:20.060]I'm fundamentally a Greek historian.
- [00:00:22.190]That's what I love the best, but my second book
- [00:00:25.950]was actually about the concept of how luxury causes
- [00:00:30.250]you to be corrupted, the whole rich man
- [00:00:33.370]in the eye of the needle idea,
- [00:00:35.030]and that was a collaborative project with my husband,
- [00:00:37.680]who's in the classics department here,
- [00:00:39.420]and we've continued our collaboration
- [00:00:41.430]and our marriage, amazingly enough.
- [00:00:44.630]In a digital project we work on now, where we are doing
- [00:00:49.920]grammatical analysis of Greek prose, ancient Greek prose,
- [00:00:54.310]and he's taught himself some programming,
- [00:00:57.020]and we're using the computer to determine who wrote what.
- [00:01:02.590]So we're doing authorship issues, but unlike everybody else,
- [00:01:06.640]we're using the grammar of the sentences instead
- [00:01:09.310]of the vocabulary or even the engrams,
- [00:01:12.374]or something like that, and according to someone who
- [00:01:15.160]knows about this material, we're the only ones in the world
- [00:01:17.440]doing this right now, and getting crazy good results.
- [00:01:21.360]We're getting results with 50 word hunks that other people
- [00:01:24.790]are getting, using vocabulary with 2,000 word hunks,
- [00:01:28.380]so it's a really exciting project that involves
- [00:01:30.943]just cutting new ground in the humanities.
- [00:01:35.400]As for teaching, I teach all of the ancient Greek
- [00:01:38.010]and Roman history, everything from the big survey of Rome,
- [00:01:42.380]which is one of the biggest classes we have
- [00:01:44.740]to upper division classes on Athenian democracy,
- [00:01:49.050]the Roman Republic.
- [00:01:51.489]I'm teaching the capstone course, which is about writing
- [00:01:56.960]and writing a good project.
- [00:01:58.190]I'm very much a writing fanatic,
- [00:02:03.400]and so I believe that one of the best things you can learn
- [00:02:06.790]as an undergraduate is how to write an effective argument
- [00:02:10.410]that says what you think it says, says it well,
- [00:02:13.030]and says it briefly and clearly, and so I spend a lot
- [00:02:16.330]of time in my classes on short essays,
- [00:02:18.330]just emphasizing the writing, taking the primary sources,
- [00:02:22.380]looking at what the ancients really said,
- [00:02:24.450]instead of what other people say they said,
- [00:02:27.240]and letting you learn to think for yourself about it,
- [00:02:30.540]and so I think this is the best job in the world.
- [00:02:33.230]I mean, I love my job, and I love the fact
- [00:02:36.300]that students respond so well to the ancient world,
- [00:02:39.650]and to what we can offer them about it.
- [00:02:48.780]OK, one of my goals in teaching is to reduce stress.
- [00:02:52.740]I think that's one of the great things we can do
- [00:02:54.330]as educators is reduce the stress of our students,
- [00:02:57.040]and so I try to make all of my assignments repeatable,
- [00:03:00.330]so if it's a paper, I want you to be able to rewrite it,
- [00:03:03.340]in fact, I not only want to make it optional,
- [00:03:05.830]I really want you to rewrite it,
- [00:03:07.290]because you learn by rewriting, and when it's, say,
- [00:03:12.070]a multiple choice exam designed in keeping you honest
- [00:03:16.200]about your facts, I'll let you take it three times,
- [00:03:18.840]and when it's an essay exam, I can't really give you
- [00:03:22.179]three chances, because I'd be buried,
- [00:03:24.830]but I set them up in the testing center,
- [00:03:28.010]so that you can write for two hours if you want to.
- [00:03:30.830]You should never be rushed.
- [00:03:32.670]You should know what's coming and be able to formulate
- [00:03:35.890]your arguments clearly and effectively,
- [00:03:38.040]and that's what I want to do.
- [00:03:39.740]I want to give students a chance to shine,
- [00:03:41.770]and so, what people say about me is if you don't
- [00:03:45.610]wanna come to class, it's not a good class to take,
- [00:03:48.750]but if you want to come to class, and if you're willing
- [00:03:50.770]to put the effort into it, I'll put the effort into it, too,
- [00:03:53.240]and you can do really, really well in my class
- [00:03:55.940]if it's something that you make a priority.
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