The Wabash Center's Dialogue On Teaching
The Wabash Center's Dialogue On Teaching
Jesse D. Mann: Silhouette Interview
Jesse D. Mann is Theological Librarian with Drew University.
Hello, I am Nancy Lynn Westfield, Director of the Wabash Center. Welcome to Dialogue on Teaching, a Silhouette Interview. The Silhouette Conversations are sparked from a list of standardized questions. We have the good fortune to hear firsthand from teaching exemplars about their teaching and teaching life. Today, our Silhouette guest is Dr. Jesse D. Mann. Dr. Mann is theological librarian with Drew University. Welcome, Jesse, to the conversation. Thank you for being here.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. Good to see you, and thank you for the invitation.
SPEAKER_01:You're very welcome. Let's get started. Question one. When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I wanted to be a marine biologist. And I had these great dreams of going either to the West Coast or to Cape Cod. There was an institute, I think associated with MIT, and it may still be there, that offered some kind of degree program in marine biology. And I was fascinated by it. So
SPEAKER_01:you like fish? You like the ocean?
SPEAKER_00:I like to swim. I
SPEAKER_01:like to swim. And theological librarian is not a marine biologist.
SPEAKER_00:No, different animals, that's for sure. But at the time, I think it was also because I was a fan of John Steinbeck. And, you know, one of his principal characters is Doc, who's a marine biologist in Monterey. And I was fascinated by that figure.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, all right. Question two, who was proud of you when you went into... So the directions or the questions are about teaching. You're a theological librarian. And I think there's not much space between teaching and theological librarian. And I also know, the listeners don't, I also know, you teach classes regularly at Drew Theological Seminary and Drew University. So when you hear teacher, find your way... toward whether you want to answer as a librarian or as a faculty person or just the groovy guy that you are.
SPEAKER_00:Sure.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Question two. Who was proud of you when you became a teacher?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's easy. My sister. I have two sisters, but my middle sister has just retired from teaching high school outside of Albany. But she'd been a high school English teacher for 35 years. And she loves the profession and she was pleased that I was also involved in teaching in a more overt way than I've been in the past.
SPEAKER_01:What's her name?
SPEAKER_00:Amy Mann.
SPEAKER_01:Amy Mann. Hi, Amy Mann. Number three.
SPEAKER_00:She was a great teacher. I've always wanted to be as good a teacher as she was.
SPEAKER_01:That's sweet. What's the best thing your mother taught you?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, Lynn, how much time do you have? I lost my mother two years ago. I think about her every day. I live here because she lived nearby. And I think she taught me to be a decent person. I'm not sure that I've fulfilled that, but she gave me a sense of what that means. And particularly these days, because there's so much indecency, one can't help but reflect on those who just exuded that sense of what it meant to be a decent and honest and upright person.
SPEAKER_01:What's her name?
SPEAKER_00:Carol Mann.
SPEAKER_01:Carol
SPEAKER_00:Mann.
SPEAKER_01:Did I ever meet your mom? A face comes to mind when you talk about your mom.
SPEAKER_00:You might have. I would wheel her over here once in a while. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:I think I met her. I think I met her.
SPEAKER_00:She was a formidable person.
SPEAKER_01:She lived in Morristown, right? I remember where she lived. Who has influenced your teaching for the better?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, several people. In college, I had a teacher named Harry Booth who taught religion. He didn't publish much, but he was a great teacher and he taught me and others how to read. That is, I remember him taking the documents of Vatican II and we read Gaudium et Spes very, very carefully. And I had never read like that before. And I... try to do something similar when it's appropriate to the kinds of things I teach. So he would be one person. I had another teacher in college named Robert Sider, who was a philologist and was also a careful reader, but a person attentive to language. And I tried to emulate that. And in graduate school, I had a teacher who had and Konstantin Fesold, who had respect for the subject. And I've tried to communicate that, especially because sometimes I teach esoteric things. And to model enthusiasm for the subject for people who think only a crazy person would be interested in this, I think that's been somewhat effective in those three people. But, you know, there have been people here. You would be one of them. Tracy West would be one of them. People who also incorporated that same sense of decency that I mentioned a few minutes ago in the classroom, who recognized that teaching is not just subject matter, but much more than that.
SPEAKER_01:Nice. What has surprised you about teaching or the teaching line?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I don't know if it's a great surprise, but... There are two sides to it. One is how little I know and how much students know in different ways, especially now here at Drew where we have an increasing number of international students. This was even before that development, that is the increase in international students. It's the experience of working with people whose life experience is so different from my own. That came as a surprise and a very positive and happy one.
SPEAKER_01:What's a favorite nickname by which you were called by a loved one?
SPEAKER_00:That's funny. So my spouse of almost 40 years and I usually speak to each other in German because she's German. And the Germans have all sorts of sweet names. We never use any of them.
SPEAKER_01:I was about to be mellow there.
SPEAKER_00:I could rattle off, you know, 10 of them, but I don't think we ever used them. Not
SPEAKER_01:ever
SPEAKER_00:used. Okay, not so,
SPEAKER_01:Jesse.
SPEAKER_00:You have no nicknames. Really, almost none.
SPEAKER_01:What do your children call you? Oh,
SPEAKER_00:they call me Papa. P-A-P-A. But I have a granddaughter who calls me Pop. And I very much like that. The one syllable is crisp, right? Yes. Easy to pronounce.
SPEAKER_01:Easy to spell, right? Good for cards. What profession, other than teaching, would you like to attempt? Now, you've had many careers over your life. So I'm not asking about the past careers, although you could rattle those off for the listeners if you wanted to. But now, moving forward into the future, if you could... decide what would you want to do next?
SPEAKER_00:So there maybe there's three. Well, yeah. So I've always been interested in law and because I think law right now is both a means of salvation and also our undoing. I somewhat like to have studied that, not from the historical point of view solely, but actually from the practitioner's point of view. So there's that. Because I do think it can actually do some good. So that would be one. I'd like to be a mathematician. Okay. I just think that would be the most fascinating thing. And for those of us who spend a lot of time with abstract thought, mathematics is the height of abstraction. I'm probably not good enough at it. But that's maybe why I'd like to do it as a challenge. Music is
SPEAKER_01:math, right? You're asking to be a musician. Music is math.
SPEAKER_00:Well, yeah. Oh, now maybe it's four. I'd love to be a pianist. And there was always a piano in the house I grew up in. Piano, which had belonged to my grandmother, moved with my father across this country and even to Hawaii and then disappeared. He sold it at some odd moment. And I sat on it and played it, but poorly. And I could imagine how the beauty of playing it well. And people in our house did play it well. And I admired them, but never did it. And then lastly, because I was very fond of my father-in-law, who was an engineer at a nuclear research center in Switzerland, I'd like to be a physicist. I can see that, actually. That makes sense to me. It's just theology, you know, with other vocabulary. And that would really be interesting. I think you would do
SPEAKER_01:that well, right? You would do that very well. Next, do you enjoy writing in longhand? And if so, what is your preference of ink pen or writing utensil?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that is the best question. And I had just tons of examples all over the place. I could hold up many. So I only write in longhand. I cannot compose on the computer. So anything I write is first written out by hand. And I have discovered in the last year that Muji pens, a gel ink ballpoint pen, 0.38, black, red, and blue.
SPEAKER_01:So for our listeners, he's reading off the pen. He's reading the trunk of the pen.
SPEAKER_00:They have just the greatest feel when writing, and they flow so easily. It compels one to write better.
SPEAKER_01:It is about the flow, isn't
SPEAKER_00:it? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Next. What's your superpower?
SPEAKER_00:Oh. I think it's the recognition that I don't have one. And maybe that's a cheesy answer. So I should improve it. It's a willingness. Maybe that's it. It's a willingness to be corrected and try to... improve upon correction.
SPEAKER_01:Can I say one? Can I say one? Sure. You're so humble, right? So can I say one? So Jesse, you know this about yourself, and I also know you would never say this about yourself. You are a genius, right? And in scholarship, there are not many geniuses running around, right? You have a cognitive dexterity that is amazing to me.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's very kind of you to say that, Lyndon. It would be very difficult for me to agree with that. That's because I think I've known geniuses, and I recognize the difference. But I do think there are different kinds of genius. Yes, there are. That's
SPEAKER_01:absolutely
SPEAKER_00:right.
UNKNOWN:Right.
SPEAKER_00:In a very limited sphere, I could say. I do think it would be honest to say I have some ability to listen to people who, as I mentioned before, have life experiences different from my own and assimilate them in some way or at least engage with them in a meaningful way. I don't know if that's a superpower, but it's useful in my job.
SPEAKER_01:Number 10 is our infamous question. Think long and hard before you answer number 10. Perhaps buckle up. Number 10. What's your favorite cuss word? Oh,
SPEAKER_00:that's truly funny. Is this for like a family broadcast? Or am I allowed to say the words?
SPEAKER_01:We'll go up to
SPEAKER_00:R.
SPEAKER_01:Well, ours is pretty loose now, considering what's on TV and movies.
SPEAKER_00:I'm just reminded that when I was a bookseller for many years, I had a colleague, a family friend, who would occasionally tell me that his favorite word was a four-letter word that ends in K and means intercourse.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, we
SPEAKER_00:get it. But he meant talk.
UNKNOWN:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, boring.
SPEAKER_01:Clever is overrated. I
SPEAKER_00:don't use those words very often. But when I do, this is where my wife's language is helpful. Scheiße is a great word. It's a great German word that you probably know the meaning of. And I do like it. It's kind of onomatopoetic. And when you use words like that, you know, you want them, you want your whole body to go with it, not just the word. No,
SPEAKER_01:no, in
SPEAKER_00:those moments. Yes, I
SPEAKER_01:get it, I
SPEAKER_00:get it. So scheisse is a good one. Now I've said it twice, so that's probably it. We'll be banned from the airwaves.
SPEAKER_01:We're good, we're good, we're good. Number 11. How have you survived certain violences of teaching?
SPEAKER_00:Oh. That's in some ways difficult because unlike so many other people you've probably interviewed, I've not been the object of a great deal of violence for obvious reasons in some ways. But I think all teachers, all people with classroom experience occasionally encounter administrators who don't have classroom experience and so come up with crazy plans ideas about the classroom that are not based in the experience of the classroom. And there is a kind of violence, though I think it's really more stupidity, that blocks teachers with classroom experience from doing their thing as well as they can. And I think most teachers have had that experience in some way, not just in higher ed, but maybe even more in secondary and elementary school teaching. And that's a kind of violence, but it's It's violence that's based on ignorance. Maybe most violence is. That would be the most striking thing for me. I've been remarkably free from that for the most part. But it does come up. It does. It does.
SPEAKER_01:Next. What healings have you witnessed or received in teaching or the teaching line?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it's so numerous. It's hard to even know where to start. I can say without hesitation that without the students and colleagues at this specific institution during the first Trump administration, and now again, I'm not sure I could have endured it in some sense, but the commitment of at least some colleagues to a real sense of justice at institutions and in society has been remarkably uplifting. And the optimism of our students in the face of incredible violence is aimed at them often, but at the larger society is so uplifting. And in a way it just compels one to think beyond the self and to recognize the importance and the value of what they're doing, it's been a thrill. And it's made this job just the most joyous.
SPEAKER_01:Which is the next question. What do you enjoy most about the teaching life?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's pretty much what I've just said. Because it's always about the people in some ways. Of course, it's the subject matter. I mean, I love to read. And the teaching life provides you with the opportunity to do that, and they pay you for it. It's mind-blowing. It's true. So there is that, but it's ultimately the exchange with others. Sometimes those others are on the printed page or on the screen, but sometimes they're in the room or they're on the Zoom with you. And that is the best, you know, the ideas and the people.
SPEAKER_01:So this is the last question, question number 14. Give it a chance. Don't just say, not me. So here's the question. At the conclusion of your teaching career, a long, long time from now, 50, 80 years, what miracles will you have performed?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I'm tempted to say, and maybe will say, Getting a few students out of these institutions who probably should never have been here to begin with. But I don't know if that was just a miracle. Throw them across the graduation stage. That was more like an expression of duty than
SPEAKER_01:miracle. That's an Atlas image, right? Throw them across the stage.
SPEAKER_00:That was a good deed, not a miracle.
SPEAKER_01:A day in the life. Right.
SPEAKER_00:That's also hard for me to say. If miracle means some kind of intervention that upsets the normal course of things, I think that would be showing people here and here, I mean, at this institution, that librarians and libraries have more to offer than they might have assumed. And that's perhaps miraculous.
SPEAKER_01:So I believe that, right? Wabash Center has been cultivating, will continue to cultivate and grow. It started small, but it will grow. A project for theological librarians here at the Wabash Center. And your influence of me and my knowledge of librarians and the role and responsibilities of librarian is the primary reason why I know to go in that direction. So thank you, Jesse D. Mann.
SPEAKER_00:Well, thank you. I wouldn't mind if you had another 14 questions.
SPEAKER_01:Next time. We'll bring you back for part two. Thank you, Jesse. Thank you very much for the opportunity. To our listeners, we encourage you to subscribe to our newsletters. In our newsletters, you'll find information about our workshops, our educational resources, as well as our re-granting program. A special thanks to sound engineer Paul Myrie and to our podcast producer, Rachel Mills. The music which frames the Silhouette podcast is the original composition of Paul Myrie. Wabash Center for more than 30 years is exclusively funded by Lilly Endowment Incorporated. And we are out. How was that, Paul?