Mark Phillipson teaching
One day in early January 1993, I walked into a classroom at UC Berkeley to teach for the first time. My students, not much younger than I, slouched expectantly and didn’t return my nervous smile. Eucalyptus perfume wafted in through the open windows; somebody coughed. I turned right to the board and wrote my name and contact information slowly, very slowly, because I knew that when that was done I would have to put down the chalk, turn around, and begin — somehow.
Like most grad students, I had no training in teaching. Berkeley was particularly pure in its neglect: it deployed its hoards of graduate students to staff English 1A and 1B, the university’s introduction to writing and critical thinking, yet how this instruction was to be achieved was entirely our guess — and our prerogative. Many an undergraduate, I’m afraid, was subjected to rather arcane or downright inappropriate material in these courses. On that tender day in 1993, I believe the “Intoxication and Disordering of the Senses” syllabus that I distributed (after writing my name on the board) included far too many poems by Rimbaud, Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood, Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano , William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, something by Joan Didion, I believe, doubtless De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Keats’s Lamia, and who knows what else. Intoxicated and disordered indeed; my assigned set of Berkeley undergrads (who could handle any extreme) hung on for dear life and made it work — somehow.
That crazy first syllabus, crafted on a Mac Classic and produced by a dot-matrix workhorse printer, has been lost in the mists of time. So much of what happens in a class is irretrievable. But California in the ’90s offered another heady inspiration for nascent teachers, a more lasting and documentable inspiration. Here, then, are some traces of classes I’ve created and taught down through the years that sought to leverage the web. The early courses were supplemented by home-posted, crude affairs. Later I would pour my efforts into web services run by institutions that would have no real strategy or intent to keep them alive (hello, dead links). More recently, considerations for student privacy have increasingly confined access to the increasingly interactive and creative web work of my students.
Nevertheless here are some traces — some more complete than others. I’m happy to keep adding to this list, because what I did not know before that first day of teaching in Berkeley — but what I almost immediately discovered — is that students keep teaching me how to teach.
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Columbia University, Spring 2009
Literature Humanities
Core curriculum seminar (Aeneid-MAUS). Wiki-based student annotation of source material, images, multimedia. Weekly posting assignments. CU access only.
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Columbia University, Fall 2008
Literature Humanities
Core curriculum seminar (Iliad-Bible). Wiki-based student annotation of source material, images, multimedia. Weekly posting assignments. CU access only.
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Columbia University, Spring 2008
Literature Humanities
Core curriculum seminar (Aeneid-MAUS). Wiki-based student annotation of source material, images, multimedia. Weekly posting assignments. CU access only.
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Columbia University, Fall 2007
The Romantic Sublime
Upper-level undergrad seminar. Wiki-based student authoring and tagging; entries interlink source material, essays, multimedia. CU access only.
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Bowdoin College, Spring 2005
The Romantic Audience
Upper level seminar. Wiki-based student authoring; entries interlink poetry, essays, video, and graphics.
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Bowdoin College, Spring 2005
Creative Reading
Freshman seminar. Class weblog, in-class displays.
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Bowdoin College, Spring 2004
The Artificial Paradise
Seminar in English and French poetry from the later 19th-cenury. Supplemented by wiki-based student authoring; entries interlink poetry, essays, and graphics.
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Bowdoin College, Spring 2004
Gay Situations
Seminar in fictional constructions of gay identity. Supplemented by wiki-based student authoring; entries interlink text, graphics, essays, projects.
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Bowdoin College, Fall 2003
Introduction to Narrative
Large introductory survey. Class weblog, class activity notes.
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Bowdoin College, Fall 2003
Americans Abroad
Freshman seminar. Complete set of class writing, spotlight essays, links, discussion board.
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Bowdoin College, Spring 2003
The Romantic Audience
Upper level seminar. wiki-based student authoring; entries interlink poetry, essays, video, and graphics.
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Bowdoin College, Fall 2002
Creative Reading
Freshman seminar. Complete set of class writing, spotlight essays, links, discussion board.
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University of Southern Maine, Spring 2002
Imposters and Tradition and Rebellion
Topics in literature classes. Sample response submissions, standout essays, pertinent links.
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University of Southern Maine, Fall 2001
English 100: Red, Blue, and Green sections
Composition classes. Assignments and related material; sample student work posted.
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BNuniveristy.com, Spring 2001
Understanding Poetry and An Introduction to Walt Whitman
Web courses for the general public, in 6 – 8 lessons. Content authored for Barnes & Noble.
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UC Berkeley, Spring 2000
Ashes, Sparks, and Hypertext
Short essays, publication history reports, graphic mapping, links, discussion board.
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Holy Names College, Fall 1999
The Romantic Sublime
Links and images supplementing a master’s-level course.
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UC Berkeley, Spring 1999
Dark Romanticism
Syllabus, sample assignment
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UC Berkeley, Spring 1998
Imposters
Syllabus, sample assignment.
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UC Berkeley, Fall 1995
Dead Bodies
Syllabus
This is the personal website of Mark Phillipson, and I welcome you to it. I’m a romanticist, a teacher, an experimenter, and something of a librarian. 
