Dynamic honors courses alive after two decades

It’s Thursday morning. As St. Joe’s slowly awakens from its midweek doldrums, Claver House is bustling with students. Some are rushing to unoccupied computers to hastily print papers for classes minutes away. Others are taking advantage of couches to lounge and read.

In the building’s main room, students crowd around four tables pushed together in the middle of the floor. As they await 10 a.m. and the beginning of class, they likely have no idea how many students have literally sat in their exact seats.

Those students, like most of the honors program members in the two decades before them, have been part of one of the program’s cornerstone team-taught courses: Reason, Reaction, Revolution (RRR) and Modern Mosaic.

While the students have changed since the courses’ inception during the Reagan administration, the same three professors still preside over the two interdisciplinary courses. Now, in their 22nd year, David Sorensen, Ph.D., Phillip Smith, Ph.D., and Lewis Gordon, Ph.D., are still going strong.

The idea for the courses emerged in the late ’80s as a way to provide stability and structure to what Smith described as a “moribund” honors program at the time. The idea was to integrate different disciplines into a multi-faceted view of history roughly from the Renaissance to modern times with a team-taught approach that could provide the program with a cornerstone course.

“There had always been an honors program, but it didn’t quite have a formal structure or curriculum,” said Sorensen, a member of the English Department who handled the literature aspect of the course. “And the idea at that stage was rather bold. We had team-taught courses, but we wanted to create a series of team taught courses, a sequence if it were possible, in which we would have somebody from history, someone from literature and philosophy, and someone from music and art covering a vast expanse of time. It was incredibly ambitious.”

The course started in the spring semester of 1988 as “Victorian Radicalism” under the guidance of Smith and Sorensen, but morphed into RRR the following fall with Gordon added to the fold. The first year-long sequence focused on literature, art, and music from the Renaissance to the French Revolution.

Modern Mosaic was added later to extend the subject matter up to World War I, and though just Smith and Sorensen again originally taught it, Gordon was eventually brought in to complete the triumvirate.

What blossomed from the new sequence was a professional relationship between the three that has withstood the test of time. A tremendous overlapping of their interests, both academically and outside the classroom, fostered its development from the outset.

“We were very fortunate because I think temperamentally and academically and scholarly, we have enormous interest in each others’ venues,” Sorensen said. “And I think that was a tremendous advantage from the beginning. I was always more interested in history than literature. I think Dr. Smith was possibly always more interested in literature than history, and we were both very interested in music and art. And I think concomitantly, Dr. Gordon had always been interested in the historical aspect of music, so there were incredible areas of mutual interest, and really from the very beginning, and I think the students sensed this, there was no sense of competition. It was very much a mutual enterprise.”

That bond is especially strong between Smith and Gordon thanks to their mutual love of music. Smith is a professional trombonist and classical guitarist who played for various groups throughout his life, including the El Paso Symphony and the Ice Capades. One of his first introductions to Gordon was by sitting in on a music history class the latter taught at St. Joe’s.

Of the three, Smith and Gordon have had the greatest relationship outside the classroom, with each having children of comparable ages and an interest in sailing. In the early days of the course, they even had occasion to perform pieces of music for the classes, thought Smith says its something they haven’t pulled out of the bag of tricks in some time.

All three professors credit their approach to the course and the interactive stake they have in each lecture with preventing competition and discord between them.

“In order for it to be a true what I call ‘synthesis’ course, there has to be interaction,” said Gordon. “What I mean by ‘synthesis’ is that the students don’t get a compartmentalized approach to say history vs. literatures vs. art and music, but rather we try to integrate our knowledge of contemporary history so we can interject whenever we see a need to support each other.”

“This is where the principle of mutuality comes in, because we’ve never thought of this as one person teaching while the other two sit and listen,” Sorensen said. “Anybody who has ever taken this course knows all three of us are in the mix simultaneously and pretty much at all times. That helps because the weight is very evenly distributed in this course. One student said to me several years ago that, ‘you three complete each other’s sentences,’ and in a certain way that’s true. We have learned to think rather like one another. This is collegiality at a very high level.”

“In terms of the classroom dynamic, we never thought that these classes should be conducted as if we were visiting lecturers with each teaching alone,” Smith said. “All three of us are usually present in each class, chiming in when the spirit moves us. It’s a joint effort. I really enjoy hearing my colleagues lecture. I have learned a lot from them over the years, and this has helped my own teaching. Our different styles mesh easily and suit our personalities. There has never been the slightest personality clash or disagreement over the nature of the courses.”

Perhaps the most remarkable facet of the group’s cohesiveness is how they manage to fit a rather daunting class into their schedule year after year.

Gordon, a Julliard-trained vocal performer and choir director, has managed to juggle a busy performing and touring schedule. Sorensen, one of the foremost Thomas Carlyle scholars in the world, nearly spends more time in transit than in the classroom, making frequent trips to Great Britain and elsewhere as the editor of the Carlyle Studies Annual. Smith’s studies focus on law and order in the Victorian period, and often draw him to the U.K.

Regardless of their other demands, though, the course is always a priority. They have been able to continue the course even through sabbaticals, including a year in which Smith recalls the hefty challenge of covering for Gordon. Smith took over the literature responsibilities while Sorensen was on sabbatical last spring, and Sorensen is returning the favor for history this semester.

“I’ve never separated what I do in the British Library or in the Library of Congress from what we do in this classroom because much of it is an overflow or an extension,” Sorensen said. “I think the work you do outside the room is always feeding what you do inside the room. The students’ challenges, their questions, they force you to go back to material that is familiar. There’s always a sense of perpetual newness to this course. It’s astonishing to me.”

Even retirement has failed to stop Gordon, who stopped teaching full-time five years ago; RRR and Modern Mosaic are now the only responsibilities he has at the university. It’s a model Smith may look to when he is up for retirement in the not too distant future.

“[I’ll continue teaching] as long as I can remember what class it is, and can recognize my colleagues,” Smith said. “I have no immediate plans to retire, but even when I do, I might continue to teach on a part-time basis (like Dr. Gordon). I don’t want to break up the team. I feel very loyal to my colleagues, and would miss these classes a great deal.”

Luckily, the breadth of the courses’ subject matter allows them to switch content up from time to time, bringing in different works of literature, art, and music for study. Just this year, Sorensen debuted two works, and while he has some set entries that hardly ever change—Machiavelli, Rousseau, Freud, and Marx are the major staples—he estimates that he has gone through hundreds of books in the last two decades.

“I think the challenge for us from the beginning has been to keep this new, and I think we’re proud of the fact that we’ve never gone with a set prescription of texts,” Sorensen said. “We’re constantly looking for new material. There’s always an attempt to throw something new into it, and to challenge ourselves. It has never lost its freshness, and I dare say if it did, we would pack it up.”

“There are moments when we perhaps have heard the same content area,” said Gordon. “But I think the challenge there is to look for another level of understanding each time it’s presented. We have quite a bit of variety because it’s not like you’re always listening to the same person.”

“It’s almost like teaching a new course,” Smith said. “I enjoy working with my colleagues, and I am always learning new things, which is, I suppose why I teach in the first place. It’s an excuse to read and learn things I would like to learn if I were doing this as a hobby.”

As none of the three ever envisioned this course lasting as long as it has, there’s no reason for them to foresee it stopping in the near future.

“I think we’ll go as long as it remains enjoyable, as long as it remains fresh, and I see no signs of it disappearing soon,” Sorensen said. “I look forward to a bright future with it.”

RRR Quick Facts

• Reason, Revolution, Reaction premiered in 1988 with the course title “Victorian Radicalism.” It focused on literature, art, and music from the Renaissance to the French Revolution.
• Modern Mosaic was added later to extend RRR’s subject matter up to World War I.
• David Sorensen teaches literature, Phillip Smith teaches history, and Lewis Gordon teaches art and music.
• These honors courses fulfill Western Civ I or II, Craft of Language, Texts and Contexts, or the Art/Lit GER requirements.