Martin Lang
Associate Professor in Communication Studies, Program Director in Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, and Associate Professor in Film and Media Studies
What classes do you regularly teach?
Media and Society, Public Discourse, Communication and Gender, Media/Culture/Power, Video Representation
What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?
Manage expectations. It has been an enormous help to be reminded that students don’t necessarily recognize the motives and processes that drive the decisions faculty make, so demystifying those things to clarify what they can expect (and not expect) at any given moment has helped prevent many problems.
Tell us about your favorite topic or course to teach.
I love teaching and learning about both gender and media subjects for the same reason: these topics are so close to us that we generally take them for granted. They are ubiquitous and tend to fade into the background of our lives, yet they have such a thoroughgoing impact on how we live in the world that they really demand we pay then some mind to reveal how they “work”. It’s kind of like looking at a dab of “ordinary” pond water: after you lean in close and really see all activity and life that’s happening in there, you can never see pond water the same way again. I think it’s important, and fun, to trouble our assumptions, wherever they may lie.
Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.
I’m trying, with only marginal success, to integrate more play in my classroom. I recently staged an “art exhibit” during which students embodied various cultural theorists we had been studying and interacted with the exhibits and each other through that lens. It was simultaneously hilarious, illuminating, and a disastrous, but it gave us a powerful touchstone for the rest of the term.
What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?
I learn best in community, so it’s the most natural way for me to teach. I tend to decentralize the classroom and encourage shared investment in (and responsibility for) learning.
Tell us something that you’ve learned about yourself from teaching.
I want and need structure to stay sane but am only marginally adequate at creating it for my classes, so I’ve discovered I’m pretty good at improvisation.
Three words that best describe your teaching style.
You’ll have to ask someone else. I’m not sure a self-charcterization would be either fair or accurate here!
What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?
Eight words?! How about, “Don’t forget to put on some pants.”
Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.
In a attempt to give my advanced students greater agency in their learning, I tasked them with collectively creating a prompt for the course’s major assignment (with a very loose template as a guide). They set learning objectives, defined assignment paramters, the works. They collaborated very well together, sorted out all the right details, avoided all the scary pitfalls, and produced a prompt I would have been proud to create myself. They then carried out the assignment together in fine fashion, producing quality original research and delivering it in an appropriate and well-planned form. Later, in end-of-semester evals, many proclaimed how much they hated the entire assignment, it’s lack of clarity, its ambiguous goals, etc. Still not sure how to troubleshoot that outcome.
What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?
I can run a MIG welder.
What are you currently reading for pleasure?
BWAHAHAhahahahahaha!
Who would you like to fill out this survey next?
Patricia Reeder
The How I Teach series asks Gustavus faculty members to share their thoughts on assignments, course activities, and teaching in general. Most Tuesdays a new Gustavus faculty member will be featured. If you have someone you want to see featured, let us know. Also, we’d love it if you’d answer the questions yourself and send those along with a few pictures to howiteach@gustavus.edu.