Beyond the Books
“I really feel like Central encourages you to focus on your students and on creating relationships with them so that they can learn the content in a way that resonates with them.”
— Kate Nesbit
Title: Associate Professor of English
Involvement: Chair of the Faculty Planning Committee at Central. Serves as the chair of the North American Victorian Studies Teaching Caucus and assistant editor of “Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom.” Author of “Willful Listeners: Reading Aloud and the Politics of Attention from Austen to Audiobooks.”
Hobbies: Baking bread, running, tennis, the Scandinavian art of rosemaling, reading old books, and a love of sports mascots and Marvel’s the Hulk.
Kate Nesbit, associate professor of English, wants her lessons to be both informative and fun.
“It’s got to be goofy,” she says. “I think learning is more memorable when it’s fun.”
Thanks to Central’s small-school experience, she can make a variety of topics “goofy” and still endow students with the writing, communication, close-reading and critical-thinking skills they need to succeed in life after Central.
“I always say majoring in English is majoring in flexibility because you can apply what you learn in our courses to so many different types of careers,” she says.
Teaching that flexibility is guided by one of her philosophies: her class is the students’ class, not hers.
“I am not there to get anything for me,” she shares. “It’s all about what they want and need to learn.”
Tailoring classes to meet students’ needs also involves letting them take risks and step outside of their comfort zone, allowing them to explore their creativity without fear of losing her support. Her welcoming, supportive nature means she would love to see any Central student in her classes.
“Take an English class, especially if you don’t think you like English … You might find that you like something that you didn’t like.”