PROFILE: Barbara Will
TEACHING EXPERIENCE: Before coming to Hanover Will, 42, taught English for four years at the University in Geneva, Switzerland, where she also studied French. As an associate professor of
English at Dartmouth, she teaches core courses in modernist and postmodernist literature and literary theory—and serves as vice chair of the department.
EDUCATION: B.A. in English, Yale, 1985; M.A. in English, Bryn Mawr, 1986; Ph.D. in literature, Duke, 1993.
CLAIM© TO FAME: Will, by many student accounts one of the Colleges most beloved professors, considers her receipt in 2000 of Dartmouth's Huntington Manley Award for Outstanding Teaching a great personal honor.
A ROSE IS A ROSE: Will's Gertrude Stein:Modernism, and the Problem of "Genius won the 2001 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award from Choice magazine, the library acquisitions periodical. She has received several national fellowships, including the American Council of Learned Societies Burkhardt Award for "unusually ambitious projects in the humanities" and an award and fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for current research on Stein. That involved traveling to Paris to examine the Jewish Stein's little-known collaboration with the pro-Nazi Vichy government in France during WW II and more specifically her relationship with Bernard Fay, the inaugural chairman of American History at the College de France in 1932. Fay, a declared anti-Semite, nevertheless protected Stein during the war, admiring her as an American icon.
MATGH.EDU: Will met her husband of eight years, Michael Ermarth, professor of 20th-century European history, with the help of the late professor of German Steve Scherer. "Steve told Michael: 'You should meet this person—she has great dogs, says Will, who owns two corgis. "It's nice to feel like my husband is a part of the same community and we can share it with each other. Being part of the same universe also makes our social life much easier!" Another bonus is the feeling that she
has two "homes" at the College. "I know what is going on in my husbands department and I really like hearing about the work there," says Will. "Plus, it gives me additional perspectives on my scholarship."
THOUGHTS ON DARTMOUTH: Will appredates the Colleges support of faculty. "A lot of alumni might not know this, but Dartmouth is very generous in terms of funding and leave time," she says. "It's an incredible gift that Dartmouth gives faculty." Professors teach two of four terms, take one "off-term" and spend the remaining "R" term on campus, participating in committer work and pursuing individual projects; The flipside of the close community she enjoys is the overinvolvement of some faculty and staff in each others lives. Says Will: "You've got to be able to get away sometimes, not just from Hanover but from the 'Dartmouth fishbowl' too."
ROCK STAR EXPERIENCE: Wills favorite Dartmouth story involves the musician Sheryl Crow, who visited Will's class as a Montgomery Fellow in 2000 and spoke to students about the music industry and fame. "It was awesome," she says. "But the best part was when I got to sit with her and her manager in the Wren Room of Sanborn Library discussing the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. We had a great conversation that had nothing to do with music, fame or Dartmouth. We were just three people sitting around talking about poetry.
OFF-CAMPUS: Lives in Etna, New Hampshire, with her husband and son William, 3. Besides activities such as yoga and biking, Will's major hobby is music: For the first 18 years of her life she trained to become a classical violinist. She continues to practice her skills with her son, a new student of Suzuki violin, and periodically performs with the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra.
