Date: February 1, 2011 4:08:50 PM EST
Subject: Sheafe Satterthwaite
Dear Dean Wagner,
I am a former student of Sheafe Satterthwaite's at the college and I was saddened to learn recently that his contract has not been renewed for next year, particularly in light of his interest in continuing to teach at the school. Considering his long service to the school and his unique position in the curriculum, I respectfully ask that you consider a more collaborative approach to the terms of Sheafe's future relationship with the school.
Sheafe's subject matter will be difficult to replace, but even more so, it will be hard to replace the mode of enquiry that is the true subject of his classes. Sheafe's approach is elliptical. In his classes, digressions unfold within digressions until the student is caused to understand that this sideways motion simply IS the task at hand. He teaches lateral thinking. He taught me to take the long way around the block. Students get frustrated at times because he refuses to present a bland hierarchy of bullet points. It isn't always immediately clear what you should be writing down in a Satterthwaite class. Good. WIlliams students (and perhaps some faculty?) are a linear, goal-oriented group. Sheafe's teaching stands as a powerful antidote to the "do-I-need-to-know-this-for-the-test" thinking that can pervade some classes at Williams. Like Cervantes or Borges, associations and links cascade and recombine in Sheafe's courses with the goal a kind of play between and among a range of plateaus, rather than the simple summit attempt presented in other courses.
I am now an artist living in New York CIty. My career depends on the lateral, associative thinking I encountered in Sheafe's classes. I know that current students (who may eventually be employed in finance, medicine, the law, or other careers) can benefit from an encounter with this way of thinking. It runs against much of what they've been raised to do, and therein lies much of the value.
Sheafe's subject matter is also unusual at Williams. His subject is the everyday: ordinary buildings, working landscapes, and the stories these settings can tell. He makes a very forceful case for the importance of understanding these elements of the American vernacular. He introduced me to the early books of Ed Ruscha, the photographs of Berndt and Hilla Becher, Lee Friedlander, and others. These artists remain key reference points in my work. Sheafe requires his students to be adults and to take responsibility for their education: he makes an extraordinary range of experiences (unusual field trips and conversations with an extremely broad range of people) available to his students, and then he expects his students to assemble those experiences into a narrative. For me, the conversations that started in his class have continued to inspire me in my life and work.
I loved my time at WIlliams, and Sheafe was a key part of that experience. If Sheafe is willing to continue to teach, I believe the college will continue to benefit from his unusual voice.
Respectfully,
Derek Stroup, '92
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.