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Mike Strelow

Professor Emeritus of English

Headshot of Mike Strelow

Contact Information

Salem Campus

Address
900 State Street
Salem  Oregon  97301
U.S.A.
Phone
503-370-6944 (Fax)

Biography

When I consider any strategy in teaching, I ask myself: How does this help a student get in touch with that energy each one has that longs to know things? I see the classroom as a creative space in which I get to mix my energy with the students' longing after the world. Literature provides us not only the excuse to pursue this enterprise but also a rich source of formal beauty, art that engages the complications of what it is to be alive. Teaching and learning are as inseparable as the dancer and the dance; when one is going well the other is also going well. Part of my job each class is to take the teaching (the highest learning position in the room) and distribute it to the learners so that they experience full engagement in the business of discovering what there is to know and then connecting to other things they know. And so, my classroom strategies always have to do with somehow working out this formula and trusting the idea that students delight in learning.

Interests

Nineteenth-Century Literature, especially Transcendentalism; Literature and the Environment; Modern American Novel; Theory and Practice of Autobiography; Poetry; Non-Fiction and Fiction Writing.

Willamette University

English

Address
Willamette University
900 State Street
Salem Oregon 97301 U.S.A.
Phone
503-370-6061