Dr. Monica Wright, Modern Languages Department Head at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Welcome back! Thanks for helping us kick off Mustangs Unbridled's fourth season. We hit the road to Lafayette, Louisiana, and found ourselves deep in conversation about what happens when one passion opens the door to another. Hosted by Dr. Brad Schultz and Amanda Price, this …. is Mustangs Unbridled.

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Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;31;26
Amanda Price
Welcome back. Thanks for helping us kick off Mustang and bridles for season. We hit the road to Lafayette, Louisiana, and found ourselves deep in conversation about what happens when one person opens the door to another. Hosted by Dr. Brad Schultz and Amanda Price, this is Mustangs on Bible.

00;00;31;28 - 00;00;51;07
Dr. Brad Schultz
Bonjour, you're learning to be fluent in a language different from your native tongue can be challenging. Takes persistence a trainable ear, and typically requires years of practice to master it. Of all the romance languages, French is considered to be especially demanding as some of the 12 vowel sounds in phonemes are difficult to distinguish to the untrained ear.

00;00;51;10 - 00;01;14;21
Amanda Price
A professor of French and the head of the Modern Languages department at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Dr. Monica Wright, Class of 1986 Alumna has spent the last two decades diving into the past nine centuries ago, to be exact. Ironically, she didn't visualize her passion for reading and writing as a career until realizing something was missing from her life and hindering her joy.

00;01;14;23 - 00;01;16;29
Amanda Price
The French language and the written word.

00;01;17;01 - 00;01;22;06
Dr. Brad Schultz
Monica, thank you for inviting us to your to your office and also to step back in time with you today.

00;01;22;10 - 00;01;23;27
Dr. Monica Wright
Thank you for having me.

00;01;23;29 - 00;01;37;23
Dr. Brad Schultz
So you were a Lipscomb lifer. You started listening when you were in first grade. During your years there, are there any teachers that you still look back on with fondness and and you see maybe how they've even shaped your career and your style of teaching?

00;01;37;25 - 00;02;01;03
Dr. Monica Wright
Well, you know, there are quite a few, actually. And probably the one that I would start with is Miss Betsy Piper, who was my eighth grade English teacher. I think she recently retired. I think she was there until maybe just a few years ago. And she was the first teacher who really saw in me the capacity to write.

00;02;01;06 - 00;02;25;10
Dr. Monica Wright
And she made me really understand what writing was. And she also was the first teacher to have me look at literature really critically, which is what I do now in my career. So she just laid a basis for everything that I do now in my professional life. And another teacher who was obviously very important for me was Ms..

00;02;25;10 - 00;03;08;24
Dr. Monica Wright
Martha murphy. And Ms.. Murphy was my French teacher in high school. She was marvelous. She was young and vibrant. She'd lived in Belgium. We loved her. And she obviously had a huge influence on my life. And the other teacher that really stands out for me is Mr. Nelson Eddy, who was my English teacher in I can't remember now if it was 10th or 11th grade, but he was also the drama teacher and he would come to class a lot dressed as the author he was teaching and would sort of put on a show for us and read in the in the author's voice and that really had a profound influence on how I conceived of

00;03;08;24 - 00;03;34;04
Dr. Monica Wright
teaching that it could be a very dramatic thing, that it doesn't have to be dry and rote, kind of it could be something that was more fun and engaging and the the theatrical nature of that kind of teaching methodology stuck with me. And I think it's not uncommon for students to ask me if I've ever done theater. Let's just say that.

00;03;34;07 - 00;03;49;05
Amanda Price
I didn't hear your book. And I saw on the inside back cover there was a letter from the senior class to Mr. Eddy, and it seemed like everybody loved him. Reading made a lasting impression on a lot of students.

00;03;49;07 - 00;04;16;29
Dr. Monica Wright
He really did. He also ran a club, a literary club. My senior year. It was just a one year thing. And I remember we read Crime and Punishment by Joseph Ski, and that was such a a hard text to get into. But but it paid off at the end. And it really taught me, you know, you have to sometimes go through it with these works and let them get into you and finish them out before you really see what's so beautiful about them.

00;04;16;29 - 00;04;22;22
Dr. Monica Wright
And those are the texts that I think are some of the most amazing texts in the world.

00;04;22;25 - 00;04;33;12
Dr. Brad Schultz
So I'm trying to picture you in class in high school with some of these teachers. Was there a spark there that this might be a career path for you, or did that come in, you know, in your college years, or when did that happen?

00;04;33;16 - 00;04;54;24
Dr. Monica Wright
It really happened in my in my college years that I was that I saw the life of my French professors and thought, you know, they really have something special going on and a career that I wanted to participate in. Being able to talk about the books that you love to read was so amazing for me. It is so amazing for me.

00;04;54;24 - 00;05;24;29
Dr. Monica Wright
I feel like I run several book clubs a year. You know, it's a real privilege to get to do what I do. And I also, of course, love French and I love to teach it. I love grammar, I love I love the Arthurian material. It was really in college that I developed that, although I will say that Mr. Prill, our speech teacher in my last year of high school at Lipscomb, he wrote in my yearbook that I should consider being a college professor.

00;05;25;00 - 00;05;28;21
Dr. Monica Wright
Oh, well, which was rather prophetic.

00;05;28;24 - 00;05;39;24
Dr. Brad Schultz
It was, Yes, it was. When you think back to your time at Lipscomb, are there some things it's been a while since you've been back, but are there some things that you hope haven't changed?

00;05;39;26 - 00;06;02;19
Dr. Monica Wright
Well, I hope that the quality of the teachers hasn't changed. I can't hit that hard enough. For me, the biggest advantage of Lipscomb was that I always knew that my teachers really wanted me to learn they cared about me as a person. It was a really loving environment for me and just that they had great skills in the classroom.

00;06;02;22 - 00;06;05;07
Dr. Monica Wright
So I hope that hasn't changed and I think it probably hasn't.

00;06;05;13 - 00;06;32;03
Dr. Brad Schultz
Think it has. Also, one thing picturing that you have the opportunity year after year to have high school students come to you right in the year after graduation. Is there something that you consistently see maybe missing that you wish high schools would maybe have a course or some training? They may. I just if I could say just to do one thing here that would help them be successful when they come to you, is there anything you could think of?

00;06;32;05 - 00;06;56;11
Dr. Monica Wright
There's a lot of things that I think are missing, but it's kind of individualized. So I do think that they come to us and some of them have different skills and in different capacities. I mean, I, I have for the last few years, I taught even at the 100 university, 100 course, and that's the course that the students come in and they have to take in their first semester.

00;06;56;14 - 00;07;23;10
Dr. Monica Wright
And it's that transition course. And one of the things that I always focus on is how to use the library's resources, how to use the databases, how to how to how to go out there and find good information. And so information literacy is something that I think we're all really concerned about. And we can all do a better job of being literate with information now that we're just swimming in it and awash in it.

00;07;23;12 - 00;07;42;21
Dr. Monica Wright
But I also know that, you know, sometimes the students do know how to do some of those things, but they're missing some other skills I've mentioned at one time in class, and I don't even remember why we brought it up. It was something about taxes and said, well, you know, you're going to have to file your taxes. And they were like, Well, I don't know how to do that.

00;07;42;23 - 00;08;06;00
Dr. Monica Wright
So I thought, well, something is missing here that they don't know what the taxes are and how to file them. And we had a list that we had a consumer economics class when I was when I was there, and it was just a half a year. And but we learned how to do things like balance your checkbook and of course, back then there wasn't the Internet, so you couldn't just check your balance all the time.

00;08;06;00 - 00;08;19;11
Dr. Monica Wright
It was it was a lot. You had to keep track of it. So maybe maybe it's not as important now as it was back then. But it did make me a little bit sad that there are students out there who who have it, who haven't had these life skills developed right.

00;08;19;17 - 00;08;28;09
Amanda Price
But let me I'm going to object here, too. When you're talking about balancing your checkbook, this is a question I'm going to ask. Do you still balance your checkbook?

00;08;28;11 - 00;08;35;13
Dr. Monica Wright
I admit that I've recently stopped balancing, but it would but it was really like in the last year.

00;08;35;13 - 00;08;47;20
Amanda Price
So Brad and I had this conversation just a couple of days ago about balancing the checkbook, and it was just drilled into me. Yeah, always balance your checkbook. And so I still do that. And I looked at me, I don't.

00;08;47;20 - 00;08;48;04
Speaker 4
Do that.

00;08;48;11 - 00;08;49;16
Dr. Monica Wright
Now.

00;08;49;18 - 00;09;01;28
Dr. Brad Schultz
Ever, though. Yeah, I'm not, by the way, kids, I'm not recommending that you should know how much money you make, but but I will. That is a probably a fault of mine.

00;09;02;01 - 00;09;18;12
Dr. Monica Wright
So am I. It was drilled into me too. I did it for years and years. And finally, it's just too easy now to just go to the app and and check and make sure. And I do look at the checkbook. I don't it's not blind.

00;09;18;12 - 00;09;19;07
Speaker 4
But.

00;09;19;09 - 00;09;24;28
Dr. Monica Wright
But yeah it's not a I don't sit there and make every penny, you know, like I used to always.

00;09;24;28 - 00;09;26;11
Dr. Brad Schultz
There's a problem.

00;09;26;11 - 00;09;28;11
Speaker 4
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00;09;28;14 - 00;09;55;12
Amanda Price
So in our introduction of you women said that you had this love of the written word that kept coming back and it just kept resurfacing. But you went to a couple of, of universities with different career tracks in mind before you detoured, even went to France and did some studying there. So what was it? What were the career paths that you thought you were going to pursue and then what redirected you?

00;09;55;15 - 00;10;24;26
Dr. Monica Wright
Well, right out of high school, I started engineering school and I was really quite good at math and science and was I was excited about it. But I learned pretty quickly that I wanted something a little more a little more balanced, I guess, with the humanities, and then kind of started over in French saying French again. Maybe it was something that always stuck with me.

00;10;24;28 - 00;10;53;29
Dr. Monica Wright
Even when I was doing other things. I had had eight years of French at Lipscomb by that time. And so I, I did engineering school for one year and then switched to French and then went and studied in France and in business on eastern France, close to Swiss Switzerland. Then while I was in France, I studied courses in linguistics, general linguistics, and decided that I wanted to pursue that.

00;10;54;01 - 00;11;19;23
Dr. Monica Wright
And I came back home and went to the University of Texas at Austin to their Ph.D. program in linguistics. And I started that and it was going well, but I was really finding myself missing French very badly. And so I did a year there, and then I started a Ph.D. in French literature that Washington University in Saint Louis.

00;11;19;26 - 00;11;22;02
Dr. Monica Wright
And that's that's what stuck.

00;11;22;04 - 00;11;35;15
Amanda Price
Well, all the mentors you mentioned JR Piper, Mr. Eddy and Mr. Prell, what was it about those teachers or the way they taught? Were there any characteristics or traits.

00;11;35;15 - 00;11;36;03
Dr. Monica Wright
That.

00;11;36;06 - 00;11;41;22
Amanda Price
Really impacted or moved you and so that you carried those into how you teach your students?

00;11;41;27 - 00;12;24;28
Dr. Monica Wright
I think that we all model ourselves on our favorite teachers. I think that's one of the things that is is true for all of us who teach. And they've all played a part in informing my sort of teaching persona. What I think I really get from them is it is from Mr. Eddy, obviously, how you can make something come alive in this paper, just the care and the sort of looking in the students to see what they really can bring to see their their maybe their hidden talents that they don't even know that they have.

00;12;25;01 - 00;12;45;01
Dr. Monica Wright
And this Reidel was my teacher in advanced English my last semester, my last year at Lipscomb, my senior year. And she really taught me how to write a research paper. She taught us all how to do that and how to use library resources. And I find myself doing that over and over again. In fact, I'm schedule in September.

00;12;45;01 - 00;12;58;03
Dr. Monica Wright
I'm going to be doing the Library resources workshop for our graduate students. So yeah, they they taught me how to do things, but then I now teach how to do to other people. Other students.

00;12;58;03 - 00;13;11;15
Amanda Price
Well, I love how you just mentioned Mrs. Randall because she was STEM oriented and literature was said, which you you also. Yes, pursued engineering and now you're a professor of literature?

00;13;11;17 - 00;13;12;14
Dr. Monica Wright
That is correct.

00;13;12;20 - 00;13;25;27
Dr. Brad Schultz
So obviously the people listening can't see what I'm saying in your office. I'm noticing a lot of rabbits. Is there is this just a love of rabbit or is there something connected to French literature where rabbits are significant or.

00;13;26;00 - 00;14;01;11
Dr. Monica Wright
Well, I have pet rabbits. And so, yes, there are quite a few rabbits. We have currently two rabbits. They're house rabbits. They are free in the house. They're adorable little pets. We've had I've had rabbits since 1995. Started with one and they pass on and then we adopt more. And the most I had at one time was for we are bunny parents and we also during the pandemic, one of the things that I started doing was growing their veggies in a hydroponic system.

00;14;01;14 - 00;14;04;21
Dr. Monica Wright
Wow. Now I'm a hydroponic farmer.

00;14;04;23 - 00;14;07;20
Dr. Brad Schultz
Do you have fish in your as a part or is just an award the water.

00;14;07;20 - 00;14;22;13
Dr. Monica Wright
And the the water? Yeah. There are these systems that you can buy. They're they're consumer systems. I don't have like a whole, you know, hydroponic room. They're just systems in our kitchen and I grow their veggies.

00;14;22;16 - 00;14;24;06
Amanda Price
Do you grow enough for y'all as well?

00;14;24;09 - 00;14;26;00
Dr. Monica Wright
No, we just grow enough for the ball.

00;14;26;03 - 00;14;27;11
Amanda Price
Those are spoiled.

00;14;27;11 - 00;14;38;24
Dr. Monica Wright
There are some they are quite, quite pampered. They don't like the word spoiled, but pampered. They live in the lap of luxury. Yes.

00;14;38;26 - 00;14;44;06
Dr. Brad Schultz
Sorry to get us all track. I just noticed that every year I have a rabbit warren in my backyard. Also. But those are.

00;14;44;09 - 00;14;44;25
Dr. Monica Wright
Those are.

00;14;44;28 - 00;14;45;28
Dr. Brad Schultz
Those are wild rabbits.

00;14;45;28 - 00;14;53;22
Dr. Monica Wright
Very prolific in Tennessee, too. They are a that is something I miss in Louisiana that we don't have as many wild rabbits here.

00;14;53;22 - 00;15;13;19
Dr. Brad Schultz
And so back to you. Just sorry about that. So for your dissertation, you chose to explore 12th century romance literature, which I'm I'm guessing that's a unique topic. I had not heard you by exploring that. Maybe it's prolific outside of my world, but walk us through what drew you to the French writers of the Middle Ages.

00;15;13;21 - 00;15;46;28
Dr. Monica Wright
Well, once again, it was a professor and a particular translation of a particular French romance. And I should say what a romance is, is the precursor to the modern novel. And in the 12th century, they're all written in verse after syllabic rhymed couplets, to be exact. And so there's this 12th century writer named pretended ended Ha who is really the one that we credit with transposing the Arthurian material, the King, the King Arthur material into literature.

00;15;47;00 - 00;16;19;09
Dr. Monica Wright
Before that it was just the Latin Chronicles, the this sort of historians that early historians would mention Arthur or mentioned aspects of Arthur's reign, but he was really the first one to write literature about King Arthur that we have. And so I was reading Lancelot for a course taught by Norris Lacey at Washington University in St Louis, and I sat down with that book and read it cover to cover in one sitting.

00;16;19;12 - 00;16;47;10
Dr. Monica Wright
And when I stood up, I knew at that point I had found what I wanted to work on. The work is just so fascinating. It's a different experience from reading modern literature because you have to really immerse yourself in the whole world and you have to allow some of your expectations for what modern literature is going to to do and see other ways of organizing a text.

00;16;47;12 - 00;17;23;10
Dr. Monica Wright
So these are really highly structured texts and you can look at their organization in a very detailed way and see how they how different episodes reflect each other across. And I was just fascinated by this. I was fascinated by this different literary expression. The sort of remoteness of the period was this intriguing to me. And then of course, I went into class and talked about it with Laura Lacey and and it was it was, you know, one of those aha moments.

00;17;23;10 - 00;17;50;22
Dr. Monica Wright
They're like, wow, I really want to I know. I need to know more about this. I need to know everything about this. So that's where that really started. But then that interest my my scholarly interest is in clothing and textiles in these romances. And so it was another one of Cajal's books and another one of Norris's courses where he asked about a dress that went to one of the characters was wearing.

00;17;50;22 - 00;18;27;19
Dr. Monica Wright
And we discussed it in class and I was not satisfied with where we got. So I kept working that question and I kept looking and seeing it, seeing clothing being used in really interesting narrative ways, meaning that it's not just a character embellishment, but it's also functional within the text. I saw it as part of the structure of the text, and so I started to look and see it in all of his romances and in other romances and lays of the same period.

00;18;27;21 - 00;19;01;29
Dr. Monica Wright
Merida Francis, Another writer, he wrote shorter text than 13, 15 or about 7000 verses. Marriages are usually less than a thousand. And so they're they're much smaller little stories. But she also uses clothing in really interesting ways, even in those small narratives. So it grew from, again, you know, it's the influence that a really great teacher can have on your life and on your your professional development.

00;19;02;02 - 00;19;08;00
Dr. Brad Schultz
So this even led to you writing a book of your own weaving narrative clothing in the 12th century. French romance.

00;19;08;00 - 00;19;08;18
Dr. Monica Wright
That's right.

00;19;08;19 - 00;19;19;23
Dr. Brad Schultz
What is some astonishing truths or something that we would find within within this text? Like, what's the what's the aha moment in here if I'm reading through this.

00;19;19;23 - 00;19;20;27
Dr. Monica Wright
If you're reading through that.

00;19;20;27 - 00;19;24;11
Dr. Brad Schultz
And I'm able to understand what I'm reading.

00;19;24;13 - 00;20;01;21
Dr. Monica Wright
I think the aha moment in there is that clothing did a lot of different things for these authors. They could use it to structure, they could open narrative threads and close narrative threads. There they were fully immersed in the sort of material culture of their day and they were able to describe the garments in this in this way that reflects their society that they're living in, but also brings to their what their society idealizes.

00;20;01;23 - 00;20;32;21
Dr. Monica Wright
So what we see is, is reality reflected in these texts, a material reality that is strange to us because it's so long ago, but also how it is distilled into something completely beyond any any real material possibility. So I find that place in there, this sort of play in the system between what's real and what's unreal, between how clothing can be a fixed signifier.

00;20;32;21 - 00;20;58;23
Dr. Monica Wright
But then can change and mean other things as well in different contexts. So I love that they're able to really use it and I see authors like Kate and at High maybe to fasten bear who is who is the one who kind of starts the trysts in material in literature and how they're using clothing in such interesting ways to create their narrative.

00;20;58;23 - 00;21;03;14
Dr. Monica Wright
It's not just an embellishment. It's actually integral to their narrative.

00;21;03;17 - 00;21;27;04
Amanda Price
So I ran just the intro excerpts to this book, and it was about the woman that you brought up as the example They need possibly. Was she royalty because you talked about she wore a sailboat, you know. Well, she was wearing a shift which was considered underwear. Yeah. And there was something noble that she wore on top of it, right?

00;21;27;04 - 00;21;54;04
Dr. Monica Wright
She shows up in the text wearing poor clothes. There, worn out. And it's a shirt that she's wearing over a chemise. And they're both worn out garments. And a shirt is is a garment that would have been appropriate to wear at home, which is where we see her for the first time, which is at home. What she needs to be appropriately dressed is that this garment called the blue or the blue out as it would have been pronounced in old French.

00;21;54;06 - 00;22;31;04
Dr. Monica Wright
And that is a courtly dress that is very highly embellished, fine silk, usually with or free bands at the neck and sleeves. So these are gold woven bands, sometimes embroidered with gold wrapped thread. These are gorgeous garments that really clearly indicate status and luxury. And she receives that. She she she goes to court dressed in her sense, which is degraded and old and not appropriate for court wear.

00;22;31;06 - 00;23;05;25
Dr. Monica Wright
And the queen gives her a new Leo, her own new Leo. So she can she makes her she the queen leaf fashions a need into a future queen. So she has an inner nobility, which is a little bit interesting because we do tend to think about this time period as having the idea that if someone is beautiful and they're beautiful and always said so, the external beauty reflects the internal beauty, which of course is a problematic viewpoint for lots of reasons.

00;23;05;25 - 00;23;18;06
Dr. Monica Wright
But in any case, kitchen's very clear to say that her natural nobility showed through despite her decrepit clothes.

00;23;18;09 - 00;23;32;19
Amanda Price
So I love how you could take the whole narrative and look at one just one tiny piece of it, and you've just shared so much about her character just from what she was wearing.

00;23;32;21 - 00;23;43;26
Dr. Brad Schultz
Anything you any thoughts on today's society and clothing and and what it what it tells about what we value or uphold?

00;23;43;28 - 00;24;05;25
Dr. Monica Wright
Well, I you know, in the Middle Ages, clothing was durable goods. People wore their clothes until they wore out. They reuse the fabric for other things and until the fabric was completely gone. And I am distressed by the whole fast fashion industry.

00;24;05;25 - 00;24;07;06
Amanda Price
And to me, yeah.

00;24;07;09 - 00;24;35;14
Dr. Monica Wright
And how cheaply the clothes are made because of the terrible labor practices going on in other parts of the world to fuel this consumerism. So I do think that this we're talking about a society that predates that level of consumerism. Certainly it's it's pre-industrial. So there's a lot of different reasons why it could never be consumerist to the extent that we are.

00;24;35;16 - 00;24;49;01
Dr. Monica Wright
I do think that they had the better idea about clothes than than we do in that regard. That clothes are something that you bought, you cared for. You used until the fabric itself was.

00;24;49;05 - 00;24;50;14
Dr. Brad Schultz
Even passed along.

00;24;50;16 - 00;25;08;17
Dr. Monica Wright
Absolutely. That was one of the big advantages for being like a lady in waiting is that you would get the cast off clothes that then could be remade for you. So the cloth was durable goods until it wasn't, which is of course, why we don't have any garments left or very few.

00;25;08;19 - 00;25;11;10
Amanda Price
So how many? How many years you've been a professor?

00;25;11;12 - 00;25;20;04
Dr. Monica Wright
My first professor job was in. I started in this in the fall of 2002.

00;25;20;07 - 00;25;22;04
Amanda Price
So 21 years.

00;25;22;05 - 00;25;33;23
Dr. Monica Wright
21 years. But I was teaching as a as a graduate student as well. So I taught my first class in the fall of 1995. So it's been a while because.

00;25;33;23 - 00;25;34;23
Amanda Price
You have a lot of experience.

00;25;34;23 - 00;25;35;27
Dr. Monica Wright
I have a lot of experience.

00;25;35;27 - 00;25;56;20
Amanda Price
You teach a lot of high level content, which for an English, English as their first language, people who are learning French and some of your courses are in French. How do you keep your students engaged and focused so that they can actually concentrate on what you're saying and understand process?

00;25;56;23 - 00;26;32;26
Dr. Monica Wright
So some four at the highest levels in a graduate program, I would say about half of them are native speakers of French, but our undergraduates are largely from this area, from this region. They've had some French usually, and some of them are the products of our our immersion programs. So they they can understand French pretty well. But keeping students focused on anything is is is it can be a talent.

00;26;32;29 - 00;27;02;07
Dr. Monica Wright
So I think that the biggest the biggest thing that I can do is make sure I mean, ultimately it comes down to how much enthusiasm I can bring to the material. I think I can plan and I can I can create good PowerPoints and I can choose great text. But if I come into the classroom and I'm not enthusiastic about what I'm teaching, then it's never going to go over really well.

00;27;02;09 - 00;27;20;06
Dr. Monica Wright
So one of the things that I do and it is it is quite the privilege to be able to do this. I teach I teach the texts that are the most interesting to me. I'm going to walk in to the classroom and be excited about teaching and sharing with with this group of students.

00;27;20;09 - 00;27;42;07
Amanda Price
So you just said something that made me think of a first year teacher. You said you're so excited about it and you want to teach it. And I've heard so many so many students say about our first year teachers how enthusiastic they are and how wonderful the classes are. And it's more of a conversation instead of a lecture.

00;27;42;10 - 00;27;59;05
Amanda Price
And then I hear students also say, Well, this person didn't really then act like they want to continue teaching the subject, or the subject isn't as exciting for them. So how's it supposed to be exciting for me? So I like hearing that after all these years, you're still excited to teach your content.

00;27;59;08 - 00;28;00;05
Dr. Monica Wright
Yeah.

00;28;00;07 - 00;28;03;25
Amanda Price
But. So step back to the mid-nineties. You said that was your first class.

00;28;03;27 - 00;28;04;21
Dr. Monica Wright
Yeah.

00;28;04;23 - 00;28;27;22
Amanda Price
As a grad student. Right? In your first student or your first class as a professor was 21 years ago. So those first years of teaching, it's always a learning curve and there might be challenges or obstacles or there might be huge successes. So what was it about your first few years of teaching? What what was one lesson that you learned that's helped you be a better teacher 20 years later?

00;28;27;25 - 00;28;48;08
Dr. Monica Wright
Well, there are really two things that I would say about that. One is that especially when you are a beginning teacher, is there's you have to prep so much. I mean, you have to be ready to walk in and have lots of different things ready to go because you don't know yet what's going to work well and what's not.

00;28;48;11 - 00;29;08;01
Dr. Monica Wright
And so you have to think through a lot of different things and try to try to have a lot available to you in the moment so that you can retool if you need to, and switch gears and that people don't really understand how much prep that is. But so what.

00;29;08;04 - 00;29;12;15
Dr. Brad Schultz
I stumbled along this hour or 2 hours of your life will be a class that you were unprepared to teach.

00;29;12;16 - 00;29;14;08
Speaker 4
Yes, yes, yes.

00;29;14;10 - 00;29;15;27
Dr. Brad Schultz
That might take slowly, but.

00;29;15;27 - 00;29;58;15
Dr. Monica Wright
Preparation is an interesting thing because there's the the prep that you do just for the class, but there's also those years of preparation that are informing that class as well. So I do remember the first time that I realized that I knew that I would always reread all every word of every texts I taught before I taught it, until one day I was in class showing a film version of the play that we were looking at, and I was grading some quizzes really quick at the back of the room, and I found myself murmuring the lines along with the as the characters on screen.

00;29;58;15 - 00;30;04;11
Dr. Monica Wright
And I realized, I think I know this text pretty well.

00;30;04;14 - 00;30;06;19
Speaker 4
Yeah, yeah.

00;30;06;21 - 00;30;08;03
Amanda Price
You need to review it again.

00;30;08;05 - 00;30;31;13
Dr. Monica Wright
But I still I mean, you know, they are the texts that I love the most. So I keep, you know, I do keep reading them over and over again. And the second thing is early, maybe not my first year, but early in my teaching experience, I had a student who was really challenging to teach because she was very, very shy.

00;30;31;15 - 00;31;02;09
Dr. Monica Wright
And I had another student a few years later who did not participate much in class. But both of these students were incredibly great performers. They wrote great essays, they wrote they were perfect exams. They just couldn't you know, they they didn't have in them the the the participatory drive that that I have in class. I want to participate.

00;31;02;09 - 00;31;28;03
Dr. Monica Wright
I want to get in there. I want to do stuff. I mean, it's been a long time since I've been a student, but but that's how I was as a student. I wanted to engage and participate, but they didn't. And I was confused by that and realized that it's just a different kind of learner and a different kind of person and that that's okay and that, you know, yes, we we love it when the students participate.

00;31;28;03 - 00;31;53;18
Dr. Monica Wright
And we tend to think of the participants, the ones who participate the most as being the ones who are engaged, the most of the material. But but those two students taught me that that's not true, that that it can look different for different students. And that's okay. So they don't have to be like me. They can be themselves and and we just have an interaction.

00;31;53;20 - 00;31;56;14
Amanda Price
So what she's speaking about is personalized and customized.

00;31;56;15 - 00;32;23;23
Dr. Brad Schultz
Oh, yeah, That's what we try and listen. Can we we really try to create an environment, regardless of your strength, that you can feel successful and you can find a passion that we can support you to explore and to grow and benefit from. So which school traditionally has not been designed that way? It's just let's move this batch of students who happen to be of the same age, regardless of their interests through these 12 years, and you all learn the same thing and then go off, right?

00;32;23;26 - 00;32;30;16
Dr. Brad Schultz
So I feel like as a school, we've made a lot of progress and continue to do so. So that's very encouraging there. You say that.

00;32;30;18 - 00;32;35;04
Dr. Monica Wright
Well, we all have this idea that a good student looks like us, right? No.

00;32;35;05 - 00;32;35;16
Dr. Brad Schultz
Yeah.

00;32;35;18 - 00;32;36;27
Speaker 4
Yeah, yeah.

00;32;36;29 - 00;32;43;18
Amanda Price
Because we're the best. Yeah. We believe in the Riemann.

00;32;43;20 - 00;32;44;23
Speaker 4
So tell me.

00;32;44;25 - 00;32;50;07
Amanda Price
What is what's your favorite course to teach? I'm assuming it's Lancelot or something surrounding Lancelot.

00;32;50;10 - 00;33;13;11
Dr. Monica Wright
I do really love to teach Lancelot, and I am going to be teaching Lancelot later this semester. But I really love to teach if I need. It may be my favorite to teach of Canadians because it does have the clothes, it does have the it has. It is the only one of his that has two protagonists and one of which is a is a woman, a female protagonist.

00;33;13;14 - 00;33;19;15
Dr. Monica Wright
But I probably that's probably my favorite text to teach, period.

00;33;19;17 - 00;33;31;23
Amanda Price
So if you could design a brand new course, a course that you're so excited about and you hope the other the students are excited about too, what would your ideal course look like? What would it be about?

00;33;31;25 - 00;33;59;05
Dr. Monica Wright
Well, I mean, I already have that class. I have several versions of it, actually, but I teach a seminar in the humanities and it is cited in English on King Arthur, which is very, very structured based on the course that I took in graduate school with Norris Lacey that made me into a medievalist, although I do take it into some different directions, I've chosen completely different modern texts to read.

00;33;59;05 - 00;34;19;24
Dr. Monica Wright
So we spend about the first half of the course in the Middle Ages reading this the Latin, the French, the German and the English intro in Modern translation. And then we read the modern hour Syriana, which is it starts really with Tennyson in the 19th century.

00;34;19;24 - 00;34;21;09
Amanda Price
And the Lady of Shallot.

00;34;21;10 - 00;34;24;15
Dr. Monica Wright
The Lady of Shallot. Exactly. Yes.

00;34;24;18 - 00;34;26;16
Amanda Price
And one of my favorite points.

00;34;26;16 - 00;34;28;28
Dr. Monica Wright
Oh, yeah. It's a fantastic poem.

00;34;29;01 - 00;34;34;10
Dr. Brad Schultz
Is your book one of the required reading texts for your courses? No, no, no. Just curious.

00;34;34;10 - 00;34;45;25
Dr. Monica Wright
I know it's. It's not, but it is available open source. If you go to the Penn State Press Library website, you can also download a PDF of it for free.

00;34;45;28 - 00;34;51;12
Dr. Brad Schultz
I think I made this. I did some of it humanities. I mean, they give you some call for some help.

00;34;51;15 - 00;34;51;27
Speaker 4
And.

00;34;51;29 - 00;35;06;09
Dr. Brad Schultz
Some of that. So a special aspect of Louisiana culture is Mardi Gras, and you're also an expert on medieval carnivalesque strategies and literature. So when, where, why did Mardi Gras develop?

00;35;06;11 - 00;35;34;20
Dr. Monica Wright
Well, most of us at this point believe that it's a continuous tradition from antiquity. The Saturnalia is the first one that we can identify, but then there's this great silence about it in the in the historical record. So that had led some people to believe earlier that it kind of ceased to happen and then was kind of came back in as a practice in the late medieval, early modern period.

00;35;34;23 - 00;36;12;24
Dr. Monica Wright
But in fact, what I've been able to see and others too, is that there is a continual tradition and we can see it not necessarily in the historical record, but in the literary record. We can see these kinds of strategies for subversion, for disguise, and what disguise can bring and what it allows you to get away with. So what Mardi Gras is, is a tradition that is the way it's practiced in the plains of the Cajun prairie in this area here, which we call Acadian.

00;36;12;26 - 00;36;33;28
Dr. Monica Wright
It's organized in a career, and that is a a little group of masked, disguised revelers. They travel often with musicians. And there's always music involved, whether they have musicians or they're using set, you know, CDs or whatever. I guess that CD is now. It would be like some sort of.

00;36;34;00 - 00;36;34;20
Amanda Price
Creamy.

00;36;34;23 - 00;37;13;12
Dr. Monica Wright
Streaming music. But oftentimes they're traveling with actual musicians and they go around to different farmsteads, to different homesteads, and they have this ritualized approach. There's a song, there are there's transgressive behavior. There's always a capital who is sort of in charge of everything. And as my colleague variously would say, is the capital who kind of holds the boundary of the play so that if he if capital is very strong, he can hold a hard boundary, that then the Mardi Gras is those are what we call the participants.

00;37;13;15 - 00;37;38;05
Dr. Monica Wright
They can push, they can they can play harder. So he's able to create this periphery. And then and there are some female like happy turn, but it's a capital and can create a good boundary. Then the Mardi Gras can play harder. And that is where the more interesting play can come into it. And this is a play where there's a subversion.

00;37;38;05 - 00;38;12;00
Dr. Monica Wright
So the high becomes low, the low becomes high, and the function of this is really in these societies, there's many different levels of function. But one of the ways that it functions is it allows societal tensions that build up over the year to have an outlet. And so they actually allow expressions of these tensions to to occur so that it can kind of get exercised right, it can kind of get relieved.

00;38;12;03 - 00;38;55;21
Dr. Monica Wright
And so the example that I use is, you know, let's say you have a banker in a small rural community, you know, these farmers who are maybe having trouble paying the banker back and the bankers having to send them notices or whatever, and they're out in the field now. The banker is a mardi Gras. The homeowner is is is paying the the capital to, you know, to making the little Negus as we say to, you know, to really get on to make, make up these charges against this Mardi Gras so that the Mardi Gras will end up getting in trouble and getting whipped with a braided burlap whip.

00;38;55;23 - 00;39;25;21
Dr. Monica Wright
It doesn't injure you, but it doesn't, it does hurt him, it does, it does. It injure, but it hurts but in a in play. So it allows that, you know, that that homeowner to feel like they can take it out of the banker, even though it doesn't really change anything about the external situation. It allows the emotional sort of catharsis to happen and it helps preserve those communal ties.

00;39;25;24 - 00;39;43;14
Dr. Monica Wright
And so that's what we see in the Middle Ages is is those kinds of practices and you can see evidence of it in the literature and then you can see it sort of continuing as a tradition here in this area, very different from the bourbon Mardi Gras experience.

00;39;43;17 - 00;40;01;17
Amanda Price
When you think of of what you experienced when you went through high school and then looking at different vocations before finally choosing the path that you're on now, think about all those experience voices. What advice would you share for our high schoolers?

00;40;01;19 - 00;40;24;21
Dr. Monica Wright
Well, I would say a couple of things. One is take the risk, take the risk and fail. Take the risk and change course. When it doesn't work out how you want it, it doesn't have to be perfect. You can have false starts in life and learn something from them, but decide that something else is the right path for you.

00;40;24;23 - 00;40;47;25
Dr. Monica Wright
If nothing is well, I should say nothing is ever retractable, but very little. Is it retractable? Take the risk. And the other thing that I would say is, you know, you have to you never know what is going to be useful for you later in life. So absorb as much as you can if it's there, take it and run with it.

00;40;47;29 - 00;40;55;20
Dr. Monica Wright
You never know where your life is going to lead you. You never know what's going to be the thing that that opens up the new door for you.

00;40;55;23 - 00;41;20;08
Amanda Price
We have enjoyed our time so much with you before we before we close out, we do like to have a little fun with our alumni and it's just a way for our listeners to get to know you better at nothing hard. It's not going to be a 400 level grade class, but we want to play our favorites game where we just ask you a whole bunch of questions of your what is your favorite X and it so it's just the first thing that pops in your mind.

00;41;20;08 - 00;41;20;21
Amanda Price
Okay.

00;41;20;26 - 00;41;22;05
Dr. Brad Schultz
Part parts not to overthink it.

00;41;22;10 - 00;41;22;25
Dr. Monica Wright
Yeah. Okay.

00;41;22;26 - 00;41;28;20
Dr. Brad Schultz
Did you maybe get Sure. All right. Favorite state to live in Montana?

00;41;28;22 - 00;41;30;03
Amanda Price
Oh, yeah. We didn't even talk about that.

00;41;30;09 - 00;41;32;26
Dr. Monica Wright
I it. I lived in Montana for two years.

00;41;32;26 - 00;41;51;26
Dr. Brad Schultz
I've been watching Yellowstone live. Like, watching Hope. No, I know. Yeah, I think I love watching home buying shows. And there's one like the big sky. Something Sky went to Montana, some big six. Big sky is Big sky cabins or something like that. Oh, man, it's gorgeous, gorgeous show when it's not 12 feet of snow or whatever. Okay.

00;41;51;26 - 00;41;54;22
Dr. Brad Schultz
Sorry. We didn't just slow this down. Yeah.

00;41;54;24 - 00;41;57;06
Amanda Price
Hey, we're sitting in France.

00;41;57;08 - 00;42;04;27
Dr. Monica Wright
Oh, that's hard. That one is hard. I mean, course Paris, but also plus here, I would say.

00;42;04;29 - 00;42;05;26
Amanda Price
What region is that?

00;42;05;28 - 00;42;20;21
Dr. Monica Wright
That is in the Pacific region. It's kind of if you can think about where the Loire Valley comes down from, France than Poitiers, kind of to the southwest of Paris.

00;42;20;23 - 00;42;23;15
Dr. Brad Schultz
Favorite favorite food in France.

00;42;23;18 - 00;42;37;13
Dr. Monica Wright
A cheese called Conti. And what is that? That is a cheese that's produced in the first country region. It is a Swiss type cheese and it is something to use it.

00;42;37;13 - 00;42;38;07
Amanda Price
A soft cheese?

00;42;38;07 - 00;42;39;19
Dr. Monica Wright
No, it's a hard cheese.

00;42;39;25 - 00;42;42;19
Dr. Brad Schultz
Can you can only find it like I can't find it at home, which is.

00;42;42;19 - 00;42;45;06
Dr. Monica Wright
Probably find it at this point.

00;42;45;09 - 00;42;46;22
Dr. Brad Schultz
Yeah that's hear.

00;42;46;24 - 00;42;48;27
Amanda Price
What's your favorite food in Louisiana.

00;42;48;29 - 00;42;53;07
Dr. Monica Wright
Bread pudding. The Louisiana food. The bread pudding. Yeah.

00;42;53;09 - 00;42;54;08
Amanda Price
Well I have to try that.

00;42;54;15 - 00;42;58;02
Dr. Brad Schultz
My favorite Louisiana parish to visit.

00;42;58;04 - 00;43;05;05
Dr. Monica Wright
To visit. I mean, it probably is Orleans just because of New Orleans.

00;43;05;08 - 00;43;08;13
Dr. Brad Schultz
Yeah. Is there a reason they're called parishes instead of counties or.

00;43;08;15 - 00;43;10;17
Dr. Monica Wright
It's Catholic region?

00;43;10;19 - 00;43;12;24
Amanda Price
Favorite medieval article of clothing?

00;43;12;27 - 00;43;14;25
Dr. Monica Wright
Yeah, the blog, of course.

00;43;14;27 - 00;43;15;26
Amanda Price
That was the royal.

00;43;15;26 - 00;43;20;24
Dr. Monica Wright
That's the Yes. So one. And I wrote an article about it.

00;43;20;27 - 00;43;23;24
Dr. Brad Schultz
Favorite French female character in medieval literature.

00;43;23;27 - 00;43;26;07
Dr. Monica Wright
Oh, well, that is a.

00;43;26;10 - 00;43;27;02
Amanda Price
Of course it is.

00;43;27;03 - 00;43;32;15
Dr. Monica Wright
Of course Justin is a yes, of course.

00;43;32;18 - 00;43;34;23
Amanda Price
What is your favorite Mardi Gras practice?

00;43;34;26 - 00;44;00;23
Dr. Monica Wright
Well, it's the careers, obviously. And there's one in particular that I really love, which is very judicial. They they have a little trial at every stop. It's the Grand Marais career. And you can't find grandma on any map. So you have to know how to find it because it's very small, it's very communal. So that's my favorite. My favorite one, my favorite one.

00;44;00;26 - 00;44;03;01
Dr. Brad Schultz
Your favorite college level to teach.

00;44;03;03 - 00;44;10;29
Dr. Monica Wright
I think it's probably the the advanced undergrads, the the 400 level.

00;44;11;01 - 00;44;12;05
Amanda Price
The ones who want to be there.

00;44;12;12 - 00;44;15;08
Dr. Monica Wright
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

00;44;15;11 - 00;44;19;27
Amanda Price
Her favorite vacation spot. If it's different from your favorite city in France.

00;44;20;02 - 00;44;23;09
Dr. Monica Wright
Favorite vacation spot. I don't really know what vacation.

00;44;23;09 - 00;44;24;21
Speaker 4
Is, but. And well.

00;44;24;24 - 00;44;36;13
Dr. Monica Wright
This summer I was in Vancouver. Oh, it's weather conference and I've really, really enjoyed that. So Vancouver would be a high. I would go back to vacation there.

00;44;36;17 - 00;44;38;00
Amanda Price
Did you go to Victoria Island?

00;44;38;00 - 00;44;50;26
Dr. Monica Wright
We did not. But the other place I really love is the Maritime provinces in Canada and Montreal. I mean, you got to love the French speaking city that looks like an American city.

00;44;50;28 - 00;44;57;05
Dr. Brad Schultz
So you travel back in time to some point to see the clothing or the language. Where are you traveling back to?

00;44;57;08 - 00;45;07;24
Dr. Monica Wright
I would I would travel back to Trois, which is the city in France, in the Champagne region to the second half of the 12th century.

00;45;07;26 - 00;45;09;27
Amanda Price
Brad, if you were to answer that question, what would you say?

00;45;10;04 - 00;45;13;06
Dr. Brad Schultz
Travel back in time to a time for.

00;45;13;08 - 00;45;16;05
Amanda Price
In place for an event or a person?

00;45;16;08 - 00;45;30;11
Dr. Brad Schultz
Oh, man, I want to see something like I don't I don't know. I have a thought about this, but I would like to see an eruption, like a volcano eruption that I.

00;45;30;11 - 00;45;31;28
Speaker 4
See compelling.

00;45;32;00 - 00;45;46;18
Dr. Brad Schultz
You. I mean, I don't want to see. I feel bad saying because I don't want to see destruction, but I want to I would love to see a something like that. It that, you know, you're not going to be able to see. You always hear like, oh, you know, so many years ago this happened in this site, Right?

00;45;46;18 - 00;45;47;24
Dr. Brad Schultz
I want to see that happen.

00;45;47;26 - 00;45;50;05
Amanda Price
I'd like to see the how they built the pyramids.

00;45;50;05 - 00;45;51;13
Dr. Monica Wright
Yeah, that's really know.

00;45;51;17 - 00;45;55;25
Dr. Brad Schultz
You're going to be there 4000 the amount of power I guess it was a hundred thousand years.

00;45;55;25 - 00;45;58;01
Amanda Price
Right. It was jumping forward, you know.

00;45;58;03 - 00;45;59;13
Dr. Monica Wright
I mean if your time traveling.

00;45;59;13 - 00;46;06;29
Amanda Price
The nation, it doesn't matter what. What's your next subject to become an expert at?

00;46;07;01 - 00;46;50;02
Dr. Monica Wright
Well, I want to deepen my work on the carnivalesque strategies in medieval literature. That is something I've presented on a lot and thought about a lot but haven't yet written that I don't have a book yet on that. So that's my next my next thing becoming an expert in. Well, there is something that you mentioned about the rabbit because this comes back to there is something in medieval manuscripts called marginalia, which I don't know if you're familiar with, but it's these little doodles in the margins and there's an inordinate number of rabbits, and they're often armed or doing very violent things.

00;46;50;04 - 00;46;54;03
Dr. Monica Wright
And I would like to potentially explore that a little bit more.

00;46;54;05 - 00;46;54;29
Dr. Brad Schultz
So my path out of.

00;46;54;29 - 00;46;56;10
Dr. Monica Wright
The Holy Grail, it is.

00;46;56;13 - 00;46;58;09
Amanda Price
Absolutely not really a flash.

00;46;58;11 - 00;46;59;08
Dr. Brad Schultz
Point.

00;46;59;10 - 00;47;09;23
Dr. Monica Wright
It really is that. Yes. And I have been bitten by rabbit before breaking up a rabbit fight. So I believe I believe that is realistic now.

00;47;09;28 - 00;47;21;10
Dr. Brad Schultz
But I'm going to hold my last question for one second. I would love you just to give me like two verses of your favorite from Lancelot. Oh, any way I can help you to just, like, just make it sound.

00;47;21;13 - 00;47;22;27
Amanda Price
And make it sound French.

00;47;22;27 - 00;47;25;07
Dr. Monica Wright
Yeah, if you want to. A different. You want to?

00;47;25;10 - 00;47;31;09
Dr. Brad Schultz
Yeah. I want to not understand what you're saying but still be, you know, just like of but.

00;47;31;11 - 00;47;32;09
Dr. Monica Wright
Okay, you're ready?

00;47;32;13 - 00;47;33;03
Speaker 4
Yeah.

00;47;33;05 - 00;47;36;29
Dr. Monica Wright
Okay. It's just two lines. That's fine. That's okay. I'm going to do.

00;47;36;29 - 00;47;39;00
Amanda Price
The first two lines in French we've ever heard. Well, but.

00;47;39;00 - 00;47;43;20
Dr. Monica Wright
It's not in French. It's in old French. So this is how it would have sounded.

00;47;43;25 - 00;47;45;13
Amanda Price
So, honey, you know how it sounded.

00;47;45;13 - 00;48;19;11
Dr. Monica Wright
If it's like, Well, I just trust the historical linguists at this point with some idea. There are ways that historical linguists determine this, but. Okay. Okay. Bellamy suggested use nervous sounds. May the Joe sounds force, which means beautiful love. It is this way with us. Not you without me. Not me without you. And this is from a Tristan and Isolde.

00;48;19;14 - 00;48;42;16
Dr. Monica Wright
Very short. It's not elephants is shortest. Lei says her say, which means honeysuckle. And the metaphor is the hazel tree. That has a honeysuckle attached to it. And if you try to separate and they both die. So he's saying so it thus it is with us that. That I can't live without you. And you can't live without me here.

00;48;42;18 - 00;49;02;24
Dr. Monica Wright
Yes, it is very beautiful. But this is this is also, you know, happening at a at a tryst between these two lovers who, you know, but there's adultery happening, which is this is very medieval. This is an adulterous couple and this beautiful verse.

00;49;02;26 - 00;49;07;16
Dr. Brad Schultz
Give us one more French word. How about saying goodbye of love?

00;49;07;19 - 00;49;35;09
Amanda Price
Thanks for listening to Mustangs Unbridled, an exploration into the lives of Lipscomb Academy's alumni, parents, students, teachers and interesting. So we meet along the way to learn more about our school visit. W w w dot Lipscomb Academy, dawg. Until next time when the Mustangs run free. This has been Mustangs unbridled.