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DAVID THORBURN: I've thought
a lot about what it means

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to lecture to undergraduates.

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One of the reasons I
thought a lot about it

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was that the most inspiring
teachers I had as a student

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were lecturers.

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And as I become-- Both
at Yale and at MIT

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I taught lecture courses.

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And I became, I
think, good at them.

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But I was never as
good as I wanted to be.

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And I think maybe one thing that
made me a good lecturer was I

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was always nervous.

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And even to this day, I've been
lecturing in the film course

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now I think 38 or 39 years.

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I still get stage fright.

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But I'm glad I do it because it
makes me live for the students.

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I hated bad lectures.

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I thought they were the
pits of higher education.

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And I swore to myself that
if I became a lecturer

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I would never bore my students.

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That was a worse sin
then almost any other

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a teacher could commit
was to be boring.

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And I have also felt
that, in recent years

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especially, although
it's always been

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an undercurrent in
education, there's

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been a kind of growing
negative feeling

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about lectures as if
they're herding students

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into our herd experience.

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And it doesn't give them
hands on experience.

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And I think, intellectually,
that's a foolish perspective.

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Professors no more
than students.

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It's appropriate for students to
listen to professors sometime.

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Professors should take
the responsibility

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of when they talk to
students very seriously.

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If they can present
the information

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to students in ways that
are more effective on paper,

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or on film, or in some other
format, on video disks,

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or on computer disks
they should do so.

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But if they take-- And
in a small classroom

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they should certainly encourage
discussion and interaction.

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But I think surely there are
times and places, especially

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in the humanities,
when it's perfectly

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appropriate for a professor who
knows an immense amount more

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than the students to
present material that

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has been synthesized
by the years of study

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and understanding
that he or she has.

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And the greatest experiences,
the most inspiring intellectual

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experiences I had as an
undergraduate in college

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were from lecturers.

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And I taught-- I
was very fortunate.

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I went to a
wonderful university.

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Princeton.

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They had very small classes.

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I was in some
tutorials that, they

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were called preceptorials,
that were seven

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students and a full professor.

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So I got the benefits of intense
one on one or close to one

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on one attention.

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And I loved those classes.

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But the classes I had in
which they were 100 or 75

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or 150 students listening
to a Professor of History,

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or a Professor of Philosophy, or
a Professor of Literature talk

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in the ways they did about
ideas, about the history

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of ideas, about
the power of texts,

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taught me what literature
is and taught me

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what intellectual engagement
with literature should be.

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And I swore to myself
that if I became a teacher

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I would try to be a good
lecturer rather than a bad one.

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So it seemed to me
as-- First of all,

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as I thought about the
most inspiring lectures

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that I had as an undergraduate.

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It was one professor
I had especially.

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He's now dead.

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But he was a wonderfully
inspiring man.

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Also became an
inspiring scholar who

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didn't produce a lot of
work but his scholarship

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was very productive.

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And he was a department
chair who generated

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a lot of colleagues work.

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He was a great man.

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His name was Lawrence Holland.

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His book was called,
it was on Henry James,

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it was called The
Expense of Spirit.

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his lecture was on
American literature.

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And a number of
us in that course

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became Professors of Literature.

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I'm thinking now who
I've state in touch with

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and they're also teaching
or still teaching

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around the country.

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So Holland affected other
students as well as me.

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And his strategy in
lectures I've tried to copy.

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Or even plagiarize.

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One thing he always did was
he presented an outline.

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It was not the text
of the lecture.

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But it was three or four
central digestible points

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that organized the
lecture in sequence.

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He would give out mimeographed
sheet to each of his students

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and you would follow along.

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And sometimes under
each rubric there

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might be one or two other sub
facts to help the student.

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It didn't capture
the whole lecture.

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But you could use that sheet
to organize your understanding

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of the lecture.

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I thought that was a
wonderfully helpful.

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I found it wonderfully helpful.

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Both for review.

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But also because
what it showed me

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was that Professor Holland
had planned what he was doing.

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That he was presenting
material to me

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that he had thought
long about that

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he organized in a serious way.

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But the second great thing
about Larry Holland's lectures

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was that they were not
completely written out.

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There were parts of them
that were written out.

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Very eloquent moments often
at the beginning at the end.

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And I've sometimes
imitated that.

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But the greatest
part of his lectures

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were his lectures
seemed spontaneous.

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Even though he was
following his lecture

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it seemed as if he was not.

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He was speaking to me.

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And I tried to capture.

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I've never been
as good as he was.

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Another professor who did
this, but who read his lectures

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and was theatrically
very powerful,

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taught with me at Yale.

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And it was Bart Giamatti
the man who became

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the President of Baseball.

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First the President
of the American League

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and then the
Commissioner of Baseball.

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And he was a great teacher, too.

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And a great lecturer.

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But he wrote most of his out.

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And he used to
practice his readings.

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And I felt, even though
his lectures were great,

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that they didn't match
what Holland did,

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my undergraduate mentor,
because Holland seemed really

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to be talking to me.

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And yet when I, as a student,
looked at his outline

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I realized that he'd given
me a brilliantly coherent--

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That was my ideal.

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I'm not sure I actually fully
ever realized the ideal.

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And that may be part of the cost
you pay for not writing it out.

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Because what has
happened-- I mean,

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I always give an
outline to my students.

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And I try to follow the outline.

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But I also try to
leave-- and I also plan

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and I pick my details.

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When I'm lecturing
in the film course

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I create clips that I show
that I've sort of planned

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when I want to use the clips.

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And they interrupt the
flow of my discourse.

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So this first sequence,
it comes from Cops.

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And in many ways I
think it embodies that,

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kind of, a version
of the trajectory ,

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or crescendo joke I was
talking about earlier.

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It's a small version
of the cannon joke

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that you see in,
or jokes plural,

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because there's another
joke with a cannon

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in the second half of the film
that I've talked about earlier.

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Let's show it Greg.

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And of course this is
the moment where Keaton

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is in flight from the police.

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The cops are chasing him.

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He runs up this
teeter totter, right?

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He runs up a ladder it turns
out to be like a seesaw.

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But when I am at
my best I think I'm

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doing something that can't
be captured in printed form.

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Or couldn't be captured
if you gave students

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a transcript of
what you had done.

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Which is that I'm
modeling thinking.

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I'm modeling how you
make connections.

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I'm even modeling
discovery in a certain way.

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Intellectual discovery.

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Because by not actually
writing the words out

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I sometimes bring the material
together in a different way.

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And I do make discoveries
while I'm talking.

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And that energizes me and
makes me more powerful.

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And I think that
was another thing

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that I got from Larry Holland.

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I realized that another aspect
of what he was showing me

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was how not just
intellectually engaged

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but how passionately engaged,
how emotionally valuable

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studying literature could be.

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And I tried in my lectures,
not exactly consciously

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because I think I absorbed
some of this unconscious.

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Only in recent years that I've
thought about it abstractly

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and I'm able to articulate it.

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But I see now that
Lawrence Holland

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was a great-- I had other
great lecturers at Princeton.

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He wasn't the only one.

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But Holland was the one I
remember best and I admire

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and I sometimes,
when I remember to do

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this in the last lecture
of the film course,

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I pay respects to him.

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I'm getting
sentimental about him.

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I haven't seen him or talked
to him in 30, 40 years.

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In a certain sense
that what I try

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to tell the students about
what I do for the film courses

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is this.

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I want them to watch-- the
movie is the primary text.

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And I see myself, in
some sense, as playing

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the role of a kind of
synthesizer or channel,

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which tries to give a kind
of brief but extraordinarily

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concise account or summary of
the best that has been said

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about this particular film.

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Or the best that has been said
about the historical processes

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that lead up to the
making of the film.

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In other words, because I
don't expect my students

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to become film scholars
or literary scholars.

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In my literature courses
I have the same ambition.

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I imagine that the kind
of student I want to reach

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is that of a literate citizen.

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And I don't expect them to
have the kind of knowledge

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that a scholar what have.

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I try to play the role of
someone who synthesizes aspects

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of the scholarship for them.

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And that's also another
reason why the lecture

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is what is important.

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Because I could
have the students

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read five scholarly books
and synthesize them.

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But I do that for
them so that they

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have the time to
look at the film

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and think about it seriously.

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The environment of the
classroom or the lecture room

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is a unique kind of community.

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It depends on certain
kinds of conventions

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that everyone accepts.

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For example.

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In the lecture students
know they're not

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supposed to raise
and interrupt you

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in the middle of your lecture.

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And it's only a very
aggressive or arrogant student

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who will do so.

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A good lecturer
will sometimes say,

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if you have questions
I'll make time at the end.

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Or in my classes what I
try to do is say, look.

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I'm going to give the first
15 minutes of my lecture

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next week to questions you
might have about anything.

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And I urge you to bring them up.

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You need to do that, I
think, if you're lecturing.

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You shouldn't ever-- In
my courses, of course,

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there's also, and I
think is critical.

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I don't believe in courses
that are only lecture.

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Even my course, which has
two hours of lecture a week,

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has one hour of discussion.

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Recitation.

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I think it's very
important for the students

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to take possession of the
ideas that you talk about.

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I think that students
in a good class,

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I think you do create a kind
of community of learning.

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A community of inquiry.

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It can be especially exciting
in a discussion class

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where you actually talk
about-- I try to tell students,

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you know, this is one of
the few places in which you

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can get angry in a certain way.

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And passionate in
disagreement with someone

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and not offend them.

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And that's the most exciting
kind of class when you say,

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you know, you're completely
wrong about that passage.

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Knowing that the person
you're saying that to

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won't be offended.

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You're not attacking the person.

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You're part of the
passionate discourse

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of trying to understand
the excitement of trying

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to understand the text.

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Trying to understand what's
some writer or artist has done.

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That can be so enlivening.

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And it can be truly a
deeply communal experience.

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It doesn't even work if it's
not, in some sense, communal.

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So I think even in a lecture
there's a sense of interaction

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between you and your audience.

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And if your audience is
bored, if your audience

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is not listening,
if they go online

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and start doing their homework.

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Right?

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Or their email.

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You're a bad teacher and
you shouldn't be doing it.

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If you're arrogant
enough to think

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that you want the
students to pay attention

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to you for 50 minutes
without interruption

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you better be organized
and you better be good.

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And I think a lot of
professors are not.

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And I think that they
dishonor my profession

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when they do that.

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I think we shouldn't have
lecturers who don't really

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do their job properly.

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But I think lecturers who do,
do a uniquely valuable job.

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They model things for students
that they can't get themselves

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in discussion.

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They show what real
learning can be.

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And what passionate engagement
with learning can also be.

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And that's the kind
of defense I would

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give of the medium
of the live lecture.