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Romance Novels and Viking Archaeology
September/October 2010
by Kathrin Day Lassila ’81
In mid-July, James Franco—soap-opera actor, Green Goblin (of Spider-Man movie fame), and
incoming graduate student in English—told Good Morning
America he would start teaching at Yale in January. A few days later, the English department
chair informed the Yale Daily News that Franco had
proposed a residential college seminar. But it had not, he added, worked out.
Two
weeks later, Yale announced that the college seminar program was under review
and no applications were being accepted for the spring semester.
Looks
fishy, doesn’t it? But it’s deeply unlikely that the prospect of the Green
Goblin teaching undergraduates could scare Yale into suspending a program. The
residential college seminar program was created, in part, expressly to give
people like Franco—nonacademic professionals—a way to teach at Yale College.
The program, started in 1968, is a product of its time: designed to be
unstructured. Department rules and distributional requirements aren’t the
governing forces. Instead, each residential college has a committee of students
and faculty who review instructors' applications and can seek out teachers for
courses that interest them. All seminars must pass standard faculty course
reviews.
What
comes out of this process is satisfyingly novel. The list often includes highly
specialized courses, in areas where the college doesn’t typically specialize. A
seminar called William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of Modern Conservatism is on
offer this fall; so is Viking Age Archaeology. There is always an abundance of
hands-on training, the kind that can yield sterling connections for your career
years later—for instance, The Film Director’s Craft and even Venture Capital,
the Start-up Company, and the Law. And the program can be relied on to dip into
the offbeat. There is the much-blogged-about Christian Theology and Harry
Potter. Last spring, a seminar on historical romances was taught by the authors
of To Tempt a Rake and The Seduction of the Crimson Rose.
One
of the most valuable functions of the seminars is as a home for courses that
should be, but aren’t yet, in the regular curriculum. Yale’s first tenured
African American woman, Sylvia Ardyn Boone, first came here to teach a seminar
on black women. George Chauncey '77, '89PhD, author of Gay New York, is now one of Yale’s
star historians. The first course he took on the history and culture of
homosexuality was a college seminar.
Are
all these things in danger now that the program is up for review? Is "review" a
euphemism for "on its way out"? I’d put that at close to impossible. The
seminars provide too many things that Yale values—student career networking, academic
experimentation. And reviews take place often in the Levin administration; Yale
College dean Mary Miller '81PhD says this one had come due.
But
it’s worth noting that what seem to be missing from the current mix of seminars
are Yale professors. The current and latest instructor lists feature, besides
the professionals, mostly Yale graduate and professional students and academics
with Yale lecturer appointments. Yet the program was created partly so faculty
could test-pilot innovative courses that don’t fit in their departments. My
guess is that any retooling will include some steps to make college seminars
more attractive to professors.
Meanwhile,
the News reports, Franco has turned his would-be seminar into an undergraduate
musical. And in his third year, he’ll be eligible to TA. 
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