Dennis Todd

How many courses have you taught?
Oh my god… too many, hard to count because the English department has changed its curriculum so much that I’ve taught courses that haven’t existed for 30 years but I teach everything from freshman writing courses to graduate courses – everything: survey courses, specialized courses all in the 18th century. Sometimes I just follow my own interests and teach a course in travel literature.

What’s the greatest challenge in your field today?
In my field? I think it’s that people in my field have become so specialized, including myself, that it’s difficult to know who your audience is.

What are you interested in right now?
Well right now I’m interested in William Byrd. Well, actually it’s more complicated than that, what I’m really interested in is colonial America, and hopefully writing something on William Byrd and the difference between American and English culture. And I have a very narrow side interest – I’m interested in Indian-Anglo relations in America, and specifically I hope to write something about a book called “The Female American” which is about a female American, a woman who converts the Native Americans, a very strange novel. I’m trying to figure out the cultural context of it.

What is the greatest challenge you face in teaching?
For an 18th century person, the greatest challenge is making the works that I think are interesting, interesting to the students, because at first blush the great works of the 18th century look a bit irrelevant to everyday life as we live it now, and many students find the works that I teach either boring or irrelevant or both. So I don’t think that’s true but that’s my great challenge, to show to them that works like “Gulliver’s Travels” or “Tom Jones” are still worth thinking about.

What would you be doing if you weren’t in academia?
I think I’d do something involving animals but I don’t know what, maybe veterinary work or ecology. Definitely something involving animals.

Interview by Katy Berk