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The Class I’ll Never Forget
Online extras
July/August 2012
Anne Applebaum ’86
Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist
The class I’ll never forget is the class which probably had less impact on my post-college “career” than any other: a seminar by James Snead ’76 on James Joyce and Thomas Mann. The reading list included everything both writers had ever written, from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Death in Venice to Ulysses and The Magic Mountain. We didn’t compare them exactly, just analyzed them side by side. Both writers fill their prose with echoes, allusions, and patterns, and both wrote at about the same time and worried about the same kinds of things. I became totally absorbed in the attempt to understand both of them. I’ll never have time to do that again.
Craig Breslow ’02
Pitcher, Arizona Diamondbacks
Every seat for each of John Lewis Gaddis’s Cold War lectures was filled with one and sometimes more than one student. The class remains vivid in my mind for its acute analysis of this important period and its thoughtful and interesting presentation. The Cold War, in full disclosure, was the only class for which I had perfect attendance.
John Bryson Chane ’72MDiv
Retired Episcopal Bishop of Washington, DC
I had a magnificent professor at the Divinity School named Dr. Brevard Childs. He was my professor of New Testament and also my professor in studying the prophets. His classes were absolutely riveting. They were magnificent. Dr. Childs literally opened up the gospels of the New Testament in a way I had never experienced before. And the same was true of his class on the prophets.
Bruce Cohen ’83
Academy Award–winning film producer
The class I will never forget at Yale was Micheal Roemer’s Introduction to Filmmaking. Not only was he a brilliant, award-winning filmmaker, but I got to run around campus for a semester making videos starring all of my friends (one featuring male nudity—you know who you are). The class inspired me to major in film (a special divisonal major at the time) and pursue film as a career—kinda glad that happened!
Chris Coons ’92MAR, ’92JD
US Senator from Delaware
In law school, I greatly enjoyed International Business Transactions with Harold Hongju Koh, which despite its heavy name and complex topic, was incredibly engaging, fast-paced and challenging. Professor Koh was a gifted teacher and could make the most technical and turgid legal topics accessible. In Divinity School, I took a very memorable course on Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin taught by Sister Margaret Farley, who succeeded in bringing alive dense theological works from centuries ago and making them engaging and relevant. Anyone who can make Calvin seem thrilling and Augustine moving is a truly gifted teacher!
Howard Dean ’71
Former governor of Vermont and presidential candidate
Wolfgang Leonhard, John Morton Blum, and Charlie Reich, among others, were great teachers of undergraduates in addition to being experts in their fields. The most memorable course I took was a college seminar taught by the prize-winning author Jerzy Kosinski. He was a formidable intellect and a commanding presence. He had already written The Painted Bird and Steps by the time he taught the seminar, and was working on Being There while he taught the 18 of us. To be in a room once a week with his powerful and dark intellect was an extraordinary experience.
Kem Edwards ’49
Former computer systems manager who has audited more than 100 Yale courses since his retirement
It was the end of term in the spring of 1948, and the crowd in Robert Dudley French’s English 30—Chaucer—seemed to be bigger than usual. We had read a good deal of Chaucer in our three-day-a-week course, writing short papers about every day, at least it seems like that now. Now, Professor French began to review the course, reminding us that Chaucer was the beginning of a new world in literature. He recalled the realistic storytellers—Miller, Pardoner, Wife of Bath, Madame Eglantine—and how they represented the modern world. Then, imperceptibly, we found ourselves on a steamship entering New York Harbor, observing a new set of pilgrims coming to the New World: millers, knights, parsons, students, very like those 600 years earlier. Chaucer was with us today. He finished; there was a long pause as we took this all in, and then a thunderous roll of applause. And I remember this fondly after 64 years.
Philip Galanes ’84, ’91JD
Writer of the “Social Qs” advice column for the New York Times
I dragged my heels until senior year to fulfill my math and science requirements. When I finally enrolled in Calculus 1, it was with a premonition that I would fail. Exhibit A: the class was held in a building I’d never heard of. Exhibit B: my fellow students were not the chatty humanities types I’d come to know. Exhibit C: I didn’t see how you could talk your way around a math test. So, I missed not a millisecond of class and doggedly did all my homework. And when I swanned out of the final exam, heart fluttering with my magnificent achievement, I felt as brilliant as Stephen Hawking. It was almost enough to persuade me to enroll in Calculus 2. Almost.
Seth Goldman ’95MPPM
President, Honest Tea
In Barry Nalebuff’s Competitive Strategy, we analyzed the dynamics of the cola wars: Coke vs. Pepsi. Barry asked if there was anything missing on the already-crowded beverage shelves, and my hand went up. We converged on the notion of creating a less-sweet beverage line. A few years after graduating, I circled back with Barry and we launched Honest Tea. Thirteen years later we sold to Coca-Cola and find ourselves participants in the beverage arena, though the battlefield has shifted away a bit from carbonated soft drinks.
Paul Jacobs ’02MusM
Grammy Award–winning organist and chair of the organ department at Juilliard
As a student in the School of Music, I eagerly anticipated weekly lessons with my major teacher, Thomas Murray. Sitting next to me at the historic organ in Woolsey Hall, Professor Murray eloquently articulated ways to navigate beyond the endless technical demands and other mechanical complexities of organ playing to that realm which makes one a true artist; that is, one devoted to bringing beauty to others, and making our civilization more sensitive to it. Professor Murray has forever influenced my artistry and life.
Larry Kramer ’57
Playwright and activist
I must give you two because both teachers and what they taught me had such a profound effect. The first was my sophomore seminar in Branford with the great classics scholar Bernard Knox. We read Homer and all the great plays. I can still hear his voice and see him, just as I can still see and hear my second choice, the two courses I took with the great Vincent Scully: Greek and Roman Art and then Modern Art and Architecture. I doubt there are their equivalent today anywhere. They just don’t make them like that anymore.
Harlan Krumholz ’80
Cardiologist and researcher, Yale School of Medicine
In freshman year I was among those who crowded into SSS to hear Thomas Pangle teach about the history of political philosophy. His class remains so memorable, among so many influential classes I took, for his ability to express to us the power of ideas and to infuse that auditorium with an excitement about learning. He introduced us to people who changed the world by how they conceived our inner nature and how they thought that society should be organized. He instilled in us the importance of thinking critically about these ideas and the value of reading the source material and determining for ourselves the deeper meaning and legitimacy of the arguments that were being made. He entranced us, inspired us, and challenged us. He turned us into a community of scholars.
David Liebschutz ’80
Public Service Professor, Rockefeller College
Submitted via our blog, 06520
My unforgettable course was Jonathan Spence’s Modern Chinese History (316b—Spring 1978) which was taught in Harkness Hall 201. I still remember the class where he had a Chinese colleague recite poetry to us, and although I understood not a single word of what was being said I was spellbound by the experience, as I was for most of the semester. Although I only got a B in the class, I loved being in the room and hearing Professor Spence’s lilting soft British accent for 50 minutes three times a week. What a treat for all of the students that he touched through the years!
Joseph McCabe ’71
Submitted via our Facebook page
I had a one-semester seminar with the late Fred Oscnayna about just one topic: Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. I liked it most because I had first tried to read the Critique in sophomore year in high school, and I had felt dumb for the first time in my life. At the end of this seminar I had at least a decent grasp of this amazing work. As odd as it might seem, this course led to a great job at a great Wall Street financial institution. I impressed a classmate—I never stopped talking—so much that he got me an interview at a place where it was notoriously difficult even to get an interview, or even to get someone to look at a résumé. Fred, who became a personal friend, died at age 54. What a tragedy—a superb human being. I still think of you, Fred, from time to time, in those philosophical Elysian Fields.
Andrew Melnykovych ’74, ’77MFS
Submitted via e-mail
The School of Forestry and Environmental Studies has always been home to remarkable teachers. The ones who stand out most in my memory are those who not only were compelling in the lecture hall, but even more so in the field. Three in particular: the late David M. Smith, who literally wrote the book on silviculture, and whose field trips for his introductory silviculture class were tours not only through the forests of New England, but also through the region’s history. Tom Siccama and the recently departed Herbert Bormann teamed up to make Terrestrial Ecosystems far more than the sum of its parts—which ranged from maritime forests on Fire Island to alpine tundra in the White Mountains. Siccama in particular brought a crazy energy to field work, encouraging the excavation of cavernous soil pits (Google “soil pit analysis” and you don’t have to go far to find a Siccama connection) and teaching the “mouth feel” method of soil testing. Despite having strayed far from field biology in my working life, hardly a day goes by that I don’t draw on something I learned in those classes.
Otis Moss III ’95MDiv
Pastor, Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago
Lamin Sanneh and Letty Russell both opened the door intellectually with the translation power of the the Christian faith and the deep connection between feminist theology and black theology. Previously to their courses, I was deeply suspicious of Christianity’s emancipative ability because of the colonial and Western captivity of the faith. Dr. Russell forced me to shed my narrow assumption that feminist theology was unconsciously in tension and times and in an unresolvable conflict with black and womanist theology. Dr. Sanneh opened up the door of the translation power of my faith and the incorrect assumptions I held about colonial engagement. Both professors liberated my theological outlook and helped to broaden my world view.
John Negroponte ’60
Former ambassador and former deputy secretary of state
My field was political science and, interestingly, the required basic political science course was taught by Cecil Driver, an Englishman, entitled The British Political System. I took it in my freshman year. Driver was an extremely popular lecturer and I think made us all appreciate some of the very important roots of our own legal and political culture. I find myself more than 50 years later still recalling some of his pithy one liners like, “In Britain, coalition governments cannot survive, except in times of war”; or, “Except for Winston Churchill, no British politician’s career has prospered after changing parties.”
Sarah Parcak ’01
Associate professor of history and anthropology, University of Alabama–Birmingham
I took Colonial American History, taught by Professor John Demos, first term freshman year. Professor Demos used storytelling as an awe-inspiring medium for bringing the past to life. He gave us a tour of the Yale University Art Gallery’s colonial furniture collection. Only three of us showed up, yet he took nearly two hours to make the stories of daily life from 350 years ago relevant. You don’t need PowerPoint or YouTube to make a class or audience sit, rapt, while you let them in on the secrets of folks who weren’t altogether different from us. That’s the most valuable lesson I ever learned as an archaeologist.
Charlie Perin ’76
Submitted via our Facebook page
There were so many incredible teachers it is hard to choose. Scully, of course, was mesmerizing. Anthony Lewis taught a course called Law and Politics that was phenomenal in its own right, even without the guest lectures by Nicholas Katzenbach, Floyd Abrams, and a field trip to watch a Supreme Court argument followed by a private discussion with Potter Stewart. Last but certainly not least, Harry Miskimin’s course on The Economic History of the Middle Ages made the era come alive. Oh, to be a student again!
James Ponet ’68
Howard M. Holtzmann Jewish Chaplain at Yale
In a seminar in modern Hinduism taught by Norvin Hein I “met” modern saints like Ramakrishna and Ramana Maharshi, about whom I read ravenously. What I consider a lifelong love of Hindu mythology and poetry was kindled there, my own passion for a nondualist way of relating to and with what I still call God and the world. All this was mediated by the gentle, responsive, available Professor Hein. He called my final paper more “confessionary than academic” but nonetheless lauded it.
Sharon E. Watkins ’84MDiv
General minister and president of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
The class I’ll never forget at Yale Divinity School was with Letty Russell. No other theologian could hold my sustained attention. But her concept of partnership where different people or interests come together around a “third thing” has stayed with me for 30 years. Part political organizing strategy, part Holy Spirit, “partnership” ultimately shaped my doctor of ministry work as well as my approach to ministry in both congregational and denominational contexts.  |
