Grappling with Rabelais
Michael Randall
Professor of French and Comparative LiteraturePh.D., Princeton University
What makes Brandeis special to Michael Randall is this: “The students I teach do not simply pay lip service to the university’s motto — ‘truth, even unto its innermost parts’ — but actually make it part of their lives. They are willing to engage with Rabelais and other difficult authors from foreign and often alien cultures and periods. Their openness to such experiences is the sign of open-minded and courageous intellects.”
Since joining the faculty in 1994, Randall has guided students through the intricacies of Renaissance and medieval literature and politics. Praised for his clear communication and methodological innovation, he has been honored with Brandeis’ Marver and Sheva Bernstein Faculty Fellowship and twice received the Michael Walzer ’56 Award for Excellence in Teaching.
His most recent book, "The Gargantua Polity," examines writings on the tension between individual and community during the French Renaissance. By considering what classical philosophers, from Aristotle onward, had to say about self-interest and the greater good, Randall argues, one can derive lessons applicable to modern issues ranging from deregulation of financial markets to the right to drive large, gas-guzzling autos.
Tutto in Italiano
Paola Servino
Senior Lecturer, Italian StudiesM.A., Universita’ Orientale di Napoli
A veteran teacher of Italian language, culture and literature, Paola Servino is passionate about the proficiency-based approach to speaking that she has developed over the last two decades at Brandeis. A recipient of the Louis Dembitz Brandeis Prize for Excellence in Teaching, her interactive and creative method includes using cinema as a teaching tool, along with games, theater, even a CSI-type role-play in which students build, for example, a profile of an Italian family based on “cultural evidence.”
Recently, a national study of Italian courses selected her intermediate Italian curriculum as one of the top 10 nationwide; she gives workshops all over the country and in Italy developing new class activities and curricula. She has also taught a course on Italian Jewish culture.
Beyond the classroom, the Naples native’s tutto in Italiano strategy includes taking students to the opera, Italian restaurants, Italian cinema and hosting an Italian table at lunch.
“The students end up really speaking the language, not just a few words,” says Servino. “We expose students to the best of Italian culture and language in this country.”
Her motto: “Super energia ragazzi!”
Celebrating Literature
Faith Smith
Associate Professor of African and Afro-American Studies and English and American LiteraturePh.D., Duke University
Faith Smith is an associate professor in the departments of African and Afro-American Studies, and English and American Literature, as well as the programs in Latin American and Latino studies, women’s and gender studies and cultural production.
On a 2008–09 sabbatical, she worked primarily on two book projects. The first, "Sex and the Citizen: Interrogating the Caribbean," is a collection of essays she is editing on the perceived relationship between “authentic Caribbeanness” and sexuality. The second, tentatively titled "Whose Modern? Caribbean Cultural and Intellectual Formations 1885-1915," looks at notions of modernity and the future amongst Caribbean people in the late 19th century and the early 20th century.
Smith enjoys teaching the work of novelists such as George Lamming, V. S. Naipaul, Jamaica Kincaid and Oonya Kempadoo in her Literature of the Caribbean course. Other courses that she looks forward to teaching in 2009-10 are Reading Literature, Reading the Black Transnation and Introduction to African Literature.
Dogging the definitive Donne
Ramie Targoff
Professor of English and American LiteratureUniversity of California, Berkeley, Ph.D.
If Ramie Targoff were banished to the proverbial desert island, her must-have literary companion would be a dog-eared freshman copy of the writings of the English metaphysical poet John Donne. Fascinated by religion and Renaissance literature since she was an undergraduate, Targoff has spent her academic career exploring the relationship of the two in critically acclaimed books, most recently in "John Donne: Body and Soul," published in 2008.Says one prominent colleague, “Ramie’s verve and scrupulous scholarship, her profound sensitivity both to the poet’s voice and to his historic moment, make her Donne the Donne of our generation.”
Targoff brings equal verve to teaching undergraduates, of whom she says, “They always respond to Donne with passion and interest; he asks questions for which there are no answers, and students can relate to that.”