We asked Pamela Matthews (Associate Dean of Liberal Arts), who was recently a guest at our Wednesday morning coffee a few questions:
MGGCHR: How would you describe your academic interests?
Pamela Matthews: American literature & culture, women's & gender studies, higher education
MGGCHR: What is your current research project and how did you come to it?
Pamela Matthews: The one on hold since I became associate dean is a project on the figure of Joan of Arc in the U.S. I came to it accidentally, as is so often the case, because I kept coming across J of A and wondered why.
MGGCHR: What is the most interesting place you have visited in the last few years?
Belgium
MGGCHR: What is your favorite course to teach, and why?
Pamela Matthews: This one's hard. I like them all, so maybe currently, it's my once-a-week meeting with nineteen of the College's Regents' Scholars, team-taught with associate dean Larry Oliver.
MGGCHR: If you had the opportunity to invite any living humanities scholar to come to the Glasscock Center as a visiting speaker, who would it be and why?
Pamela Matthews: Louis Menand. He writes for the New Yorker (as well as teaching at Columbia, I believe) and has the most beautiful writing style as well as an incredible mind.
MGGCHR: If you were stranded on a desert island, what material would you want with you?
Pamela Matthews: Oh, my. My new BlackBerry, a set of the novels of Henry James, and plenty of blank notebooks and beautiful pens.
