The secret lives of our profs: Assistant Professor of English Garth Bond
Naveed Islam
Issue date: 5/29/09 Section: Features
Bond was first drawn to modern American literature, listing William Faulkner, Ernest Hemmingway and Philip Roth as amongst his favorites. His interests eventually moved into earlier periods in English literature, where much of his current research is focused.
"[My] professors would show me different ways of reading poetry that I had thought was just sort of love poetry - not that there's anything wrong with that - but having them give me a different way of reading it and helping me see how this love poetry could also be a response to the political environment at court really just opened my eyes."
Bond earned his master's degree from the University of Chicago, "which was good because it [was preparation] for the Wisconsin winters."
He recalled the lengthy process of transitioning into life as a graduate student as both an exciting and turbulent time in his life: "I thought that it would be just like being an undergrad except a little bit harder or more serious and it really wasn't. As an undergraduate I was being trained to be a citizen, and the main goal was for me to learn as much as I could and to explore the things that I was interested in. The purpose of grad school was really not to make me a better person in a general way but to specifically train me for a profession, and that's a difficult transition to make."
Professor Bond has almost finished his first term teaching the History of the Book and is continuing his research on manuscript circulation and poets who continued circulating their writing through these means even after the emergence of print.
"I'm very interested in how the medium in which you work shapes the products that you're producing and shapes how you think about what it means to be an artist," said Bond. "It is very interesting to me, to think about how the changes in technology change the ways in which we think about works."
He does not have a Shakespeare play that he calls his favorite, but he finds "The Tempest" to be the most enjoyable of the Bard's work to teach.
"[My] professors would show me different ways of reading poetry that I had thought was just sort of love poetry - not that there's anything wrong with that - but having them give me a different way of reading it and helping me see how this love poetry could also be a response to the political environment at court really just opened my eyes."
Bond earned his master's degree from the University of Chicago, "which was good because it [was preparation] for the Wisconsin winters."
He recalled the lengthy process of transitioning into life as a graduate student as both an exciting and turbulent time in his life: "I thought that it would be just like being an undergrad except a little bit harder or more serious and it really wasn't. As an undergraduate I was being trained to be a citizen, and the main goal was for me to learn as much as I could and to explore the things that I was interested in. The purpose of grad school was really not to make me a better person in a general way but to specifically train me for a profession, and that's a difficult transition to make."
Professor Bond has almost finished his first term teaching the History of the Book and is continuing his research on manuscript circulation and poets who continued circulating their writing through these means even after the emergence of print.
"I'm very interested in how the medium in which you work shapes the products that you're producing and shapes how you think about what it means to be an artist," said Bond. "It is very interesting to me, to think about how the changes in technology change the ways in which we think about works."
He does not have a Shakespeare play that he calls his favorite, but he finds "The Tempest" to be the most enjoyable of the Bard's work to teach.
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