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time off with a prof
hello everyone welcome back to yet
another episode of time off with a prof
today i'm excited to introduce to you a
distinguished member of the art and
art history department, professor would
you mind introducing yourself
including your name, pronouns, and your
favorite spot on campus?
my name is alexander nemerov,
he/him, i'm the chair
of the art and art history department at
stanford. this is going to be my ninth
year at stanford, my favorite place on
campus
is i believe green library - 
in many of its spaces
oh i definitely agree, green library was
my go-to place to study
which part Kasen?
i loved actually going into
the basements
i don't know, a lot of people -  i just
like the the atmosphere which is very
quiet,
it's very studious, very like a
library-esque you know?
oh yes for sure
yeah i guess professor would you mind
telling us a little bit about your
background maybe like where you're from,
what things you like growing up?
i grew up in st louis, missouri
my father was a professor at Washington
University in the english department
he was a poet - i grew up
in a desegregated part
of st louis which was has remained a
very
profoundly meaningful part of my
experience
now up into my 50s
i studied art history and english
at undergraduate which was at the
University of Vermont
in Burlington, Vermont - i'm actually in
my younger
daughter's bedroom right now while
she's away
and this isn't even really our house
because we're renting a house in San
Francisco so
i'm sitting here on this kind of
makeshift chair
trying to be the impressive Stanford
professor in my 16 year old daughter's room
thank you for sharing - did you
always want to pursue
art coming from an english, poetic
background or how did that,
how did that come to be?
yeah very good question, i think art history
is really the art of putting words to
images
whether spoken or written so although
when i look back at who i was when i was
18 when i look back at that person i
think
there are many aspects who of me at 18
that did not predict who i am now
but uh one that did was studying english
and art history because it is
exactly not only what i do but what i
love to do and which fulfills me and
affirms me in my life you know
yeah thank you for sharing
that
and we could really sense your passion
about your work and would you mind just
explaining a little bit about, you know,
what courses you teach?
maybe what sort of stuff you're involved
with outside of teaching?
yes well i teach, probably the class
that would be most connected to me at
Stanford, is
this one called How to look at art and
why? which i teach every fall
and i will be teaching again starting in
September for the ninth straight year
which is an introductory course of the
history of western art
going from the renaissance to the
present and
it does move chronologically but it's
really about
much more than if you like a khan
academy
or AP art history kind of first you know
this then you know that
then what do you have? nothing really
except you know
a bunch more stuff right instead it's
very much about how
how can art be
a part of one's life in terms of shaping
who one is
of allowing and opening
different realms of experience of
feeling
so i'm trying to not be a specialist
not be an information deliverer
which is thankless not only for my
students but for myself
but instead be a kind of meditator on
what it is that
an artistic vision and aesthetic
experience can do for us
that we might lack otherwise
so what advice might you have for
any frosh particularly one who's
thinking about -
should art and art history be a part of
my stanford experience?
well i would say
take, take my class and see
what you think, you know,
it's an introductory class or take
another class and just sort of
dip one's foot in and see
i'm not in the business of making people
smart, i'm kind of making - 
i'm in the business of
restoring a kind of wonderment and
if you like asking my students to to
sort of
check their check their knowingness
at the door,
many of my students come into classes
thinking well let's stan -
you know Atanford as exalted as it is is
going to be basically like high school
in the sense it's going to be about
right answers
and what the the failure there is that
to understand, it's an
understandable failure, but it's oh this
is
actually college is about where you
learn to think not to say high school
students aren't already thinking but
think maybe in a more radical way
yeah thank you for your thoughts!
so one of our concluding questions that we
have is we have the three books program
this year that's centered around grit
and character and we'd like to hear your
perspective and your thoughts on what
grit is?
yes, i think someone was telling me
about grit that a professor
is someone who
reads bad evaluations, you know, or
gets a complaining email or something
like that
about the course or so on and then
they still get up the next day and teach
you know
that's grit and in terms of where i get
that grit from i would just say i'm a big ice hockey fan and i watch
my favorite team play and i just see the
level of commitment and,
you know, courage, intelligence, split
second decision making
physical stamina which is a part of
teaching and
i just i look to that as an example
i think also my mother
my mother grew up pretty poor in england
she
was from england and she lived in
London during the Second World War and
was bombed
like the other citizens of London
every night, you know, and basically
people were trying to kill her for years
and she survived and she survived as a
wounded soul for sure
but she lived into her 80s, she had grit
thank you so much for sharing that and
so as our final question i was just
wondering
what advice might you have for frosh
coming into an online school environment?
you know, you said your daughter is doing
the same thing
and maybe a really important element
that i think you pointed out is
combating that performative intelligence
like that sense of
what they think a Stanford student should be
i think
that's part of it it's also
just what i said before Victoria, i think
you know avowing your passion
discovering it
which in one sense sounds just like
the stuff of any standard inspirational
speech
at any freshman event or in any
booklet about a university for
prospective students etc so i'm aware of
that but
boy the opposite of that is bad
where you become alienated from your
classes from the idea of instruction itself
well that was our last question,
we're very grateful that you were able to join
us for an interview we found that very
insightful and very inspiring
and if you can just hold on we'll after
we finish after we end the recording
we'll we'll talk with you
really briefly yes we're really grateful
that you came
and i will see you in the fall
okay thank you my pleasure
you
