The Geomythologist in Our Midst | Senior Spotlight | We Ask, Majors Answer | Events in the English Department
The Geomythologist in Our Midst
An Interview with Visiting Professor Tim Burbery!
Last Friday, a newcomer to Second Laird gave a talk that was absolutely packed… in Anderson? That’s right, Tim Burbery, a visiting professor from Marshall University here for the fall, gave a talk that united STEM and the humanities, drawing a standing-room-only crowd to discuss myth and science. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves—let’s begin with Tim and how he got here.
He describes his path to Carleton as extremely serendipitous: “I had a sabbatical at my home university… I reached out to George Shuffelton… [with] a crazy idea… One thing led to another. So here I am.” He admits that he wanted to teach this fall to support his daughter, senior Claire Burbery, in her last soccer season and to be a little closer than “13 hours away by car.” He’s already enchanted with Carleton and thinks the students are especially “wonderful… they’re engaged. And I like the camaraderie here… the small college atmosphere. I teach in a big state university, and it’s nice, but everyone’s kind of in their own silos, whereas here there’s a sense of community.”
Despite the irony of teaching during his sabbatical, Tim added that he will have plenty of time to work on a new book on geomythology, his main field of research. He describes it as “sort of fall[ing] between two stools. It’s not quite Classics. It’s not quite older literature, it’s sort of betwixt and between. But that’s kind of the fun of it too, trying to figure out, what is this thing exactly?” The field is still fairly young, so “it doesn’t have a ton of infrastructure” but he figures that “whether they’re scholars, researchers, students, everybody loves a good story.”
The field of geomythology is an attempt to understand geologic events, fossils, and other natural phenomena through myths and oral accounts. From the ancient Greeks to Native Americans, people have told stories to understand the world around them and protect generations to come.
All this was the subject of Tim’s talk that drew such a crowd. Students of history, English, geology, and Classics jostled for seats, eager to hear about possible origin stories of unicorns and the Hawaiian islands. Interweaving myth and science, Tim made the case that qualitative accounts may be essential to a scientific understanding of the world. For those eager to learn more, he recommends Adrienne Mayor’s book, The First Fossil Hunters.
In describing his class on The Lord of the Rings and Dune, he used the word “fun” approximately five times. Though Tim often teaches Tolkien, he’s really excited about his Milton and Modernity class. While “I started my career as a Milton scholar, I haven’t done it as recently… so it’s fun to kind of get back to that and really dig in.” I think it’s safe to say Tim is enjoying himself.
Whether you’re interested in hobbits or Tim’s favorite mythical creature (it’s between a cyclops and griffin), be sure to say hello before the term ends and he returns to West Virginia!
Senior Spotlight: Ryan Bernstein and Chloe Epperson
Read below to find out all about senior English majors Ryan and Chloe favorite books, classes, and what they consider to be their most “English major” traits.
Ryan Bernstein:
What is your plan for comps?
I’m going to write a short story collection that is about vice and virtue, where I explore virtue as vice and vice as virtue. That’s about as far as I am right now.
What is your favorite book?
My favorite book of all time is Going Bovine by Libba Bray. It’s a YA novel. It’s about a 16-year-old who gets diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which is mad cow disease for humans.
What is your most “English major” trait?
I like performative reading on the bald spot. I like Adrienne Lenker. I guess these are more performative male traits… I discuss literature?
What has been your favorite class?
Banned, Censored, Reviled with Pierre. It was only one of my first English classes I’ve taken, and whenever I left the room, I felt my brain had gotten bigger. It helped me decide I wanted to be an English major.
What advice would you give to future English majors?
Go to office hours and really talk through your paper topics. Professors are going to be a lot more understanding if your essay is bad if you’ve talked it through with them.
What are your post-grad plans?
I have no concrete plans at all. I think my aspiration would be to one day be one of those people who come back to Carleton because I’ve been successful in some way, like a visiting professor. Then all the professors would be bending over to buy me coffee.
Chloe Epperson:
What is your plan for comps?
I’m doing colloquium!
What is your favorite book?
My favorite book is this book I read in London this last winter by Sarah Waters called Tipping the Velvet. It was so good. I was tempted to take it home with me.
What is your most “English major” trait?
I love theater! I’ll take any opportunity to see a play.
What has been your favorite class?
Maybe unpopular, but I loved Methods, the things that we learned…, that was when I was like “oh my god, I’m an English major.”
What advice would you give to future English majors?
If you feel like you don’t know that much about the English canon–I’m using finger quotes for your recording right now–if you feel like that, everyone feels like that. So don’t worry… it’s a common feeling… you’re not going to have read everything that there is to read.
What are your current post-graduation aspirations?
Lowkey… I don’t know. The chart opposite Solvei’s office is really giving me hope. Because I’m like–wow, I can do anything. Hopefully, I can teach, that would be ideal… I would also love to continue writing about queer literature.
We Ask, Majors Answer
Yeah, we turned our segment from last year on its head. Are you sick of hearing from the profs? Well you’re in luck. We asked some majors what class benefited them the most.
Lizzie Coy-Bjork (‘27):
“Drama, Film, & Society with Pierre Hecker taught me a lot about time management, revising my essays. He really helped me cut out a lot of unnecessary flowery language while still fine-tuning my personal voice. To this day it is still one of my favorite classes I’ve taken at Carleton!”
Gabe Murillo-Torres (‘27):
“The course that has benefited me the most was ‘Banned. Censored. Reviled.’ because the professor Pierre Hecker would call me out for all my mistakes unapologetically, yet provide guidance toward where I went wrong so that I knew exactly what it is that I need to change about myself as a student, including both habits and techniques for studying literature.
The content in the class exposed me to new levels of comprehending and creating literature… granting more fascination for humanity through books like Gender Queer and nausea through all of Lolita. Most importantly, I learned how to identify and create an argumentative thesis; however, Pierre would argue that I have more to learn about creating theses, but then again, he’d explain how so.”
Piper Henderson (‘27):
“Critical Methods has really helped me out as an English major. Literary theory is daunting, but the course made it much more approachable and digestible. Plus we got to read a huge variety of poems and short stories; I discovered a few new favorite poems.”
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