Margaret P. Monteverde
Hi. I'm Dr. Maggie Monteverde. I could begin my personal profile by introducing myself via a string of titles and degrees, but you can look at my Vita if you want to see those. Besides, if you've found this statement by surfing the net, you've already proven yourself to be more adept than I am at a technology that in the twenty-first century is going to prove a lot more valuable than any of my credentials I suspect. But I suppose my techno-incompetent status is in keeping with my position as the resident medievalist at Belmont. Or maybe it is just that as a person who also enjoys, and sometimes even gets a chance to teach, science fiction, I keep hoping I can wake up when the revolution is over. I was tempted not to create a web page for myself [in fact, I only created the text a colleague did the magic], but I figured that as Associate Dean of Humanities, as well as the representative for Belmont's study abroad programs in English-speaking countries Study Abroad representing Belmont's consortial relationship with the Co-operative Center for Study Abroad CCSA , chances were good that a number of people visiting our web-site might have questions to ask me or perhaps even questions about me. Maggie Monteverde
So, who am I? Well, first and foremost, despite the fancy-sounding titles, I am a teacher. That's why I've included my teaching philosophy and goals here, to give you some idea of what I mean when I profess to teach. Digressing briefly, as medievalists are wont to do, I suspect that is not how you are used to hearing the word profess used. Today we refer to professional schools and professional education. Belmont's vision statement states that we 'bring together the best of liberal arts and professional education.' However, back in the medieval universities, teaching WAS to profess, as in, to claim knowledge of something. So, teaching is my profession.
What do I claim knowledge of? In 1978, I graduated from Chatham College in Pittsburgh with a B.A. in English. The focus of my graduate education was medieval studies. In 1980, I received my M.A. in English Language and Medieval Literature from Leeds University in England. In 1988, I completed my Ph.D. at Ohio State University, writing my dissertation on the concept of history in early English literature. These interests still form the underpinning of much of what I teach at Belmont: History of the English Language, Chaucer, Medieval Literature, Arthurian Romance, and the first half of British Literature. However, one of the wonderful things about teaching at a smaller school which focuses on teaching more than research is the opportunity to explore areas in which one has interest and/or secondary training. So, I also teach, when the occasion arises, courses on war literature, literature of love, drama, and yes, science fiction. I also still teach Composition, and not because I have to - I enjoy working with students as they develop their skills as thinkers and writers. It is the same reason I enjoy working with students in our Honors and Master's programs as they write theses. In recent years, I've also done a lot of team teaching with faculty in History, Biology, and Religion and am currently involved in the Linked Cohort Program in our BELL core.
Another area to which I dedicate a great deal of time, and something in which I wish I could involve every student, is study abroad. When I was in college, I spent my junior year in London. I still consider it one of the high points of my life. One of the great pleasures of my career thus far at Belmont has been encouraging students to bring their learning to life through an experience in another country. I have traveled with and taught students in Ireland, Scotland, England, Australia and New Zealand. I spent a fall semester teaching students from Belmont and our CCSA consortium in Cambridge and followed that up by serving as an exchange professor in Dresden, Germany. My husband and I even took eight students with us on our honeymoon and ten years later went 'as students' with our study abroad program to China! I tell my students that the greatest value of study abroad is that while allowing you to experience places you have only studied before it offers you the best way to come to know yourself truly: only by placing your cultural inheritance against another background can you hope to see it, assess its value, cultivate those aspects you consider important, and change those aspects you find troubling. Of course, ultimately, that is the primary goal of education.
I guess that's a good note to end on ...except to add that in addition to all that highbrow stuff, I also enjoy movies and television [yes, I've watched all the Star Trek spinoffs], singing [I sing in the Cathedral Choir of Christ Episcopal Cathedral], travel, gardening [I find it cheaper than therapy - though only just], and cooking. In fact, if you were to come to Belmont, you might have an opportunity to participate in one of the teas I sponsor for CCSA, or in a medieval feast for one of my courses, or in a family language dinner in History of the English language. Food is life - for the body and the mind.
email: maggie.monteverde@belmont.edu
phone: 615.460.6197
office: WHB 207C
