Interview with Ted Hadzi-Antich, Jr.
In continuation of our coverage of the Great Questions Seminars, we are pleased to bring you our first interview with a program faculty member! Ted Hadzi-Antich, Jr. is the Department Chair and Associate Professor of Government at ACC, and is one of the founding faculty of GQ. I sat down with Ted to chat about his experience as a GQ instructor, and to get his answer to the million-dollar question: Why, in 2019, is it important for students (and the rest of us) to read an entire book cover to cover?
Tell us more about your role in the Great Questions seminar.
I’m the Project Director of our grant program- essentially, I’m the principle investigator of all things Great Questions – and I also teach a section of the course. My big role is to instigate the faculty collaboration, and to train faculty. The project started about five years ago when ACC mandated a student success class. Several of us faculty had an alternate vision for what that class could be. The result was GQ, which fulfills the student success requirement, but instead of a typical lecture course, it’s faculty-lead and seminar-based. There is a lot of faculty collaboration within the program: we all teach from a common syllabus (so that we’re all quite literally on the same page) and attend monthly lunch meetings where we discuss what’s happening in our classrooms, what’s working what’s not, and how to plan for the future. This is the second semester we’ve offered these classes for credit, so we’re always learning from each other. Any faculty who teach humanities classes can attend our six-week training classes and become part of the program – this year we’ve already trained 34 faculty members!
What value do you believe the classic works discussed in GQ have for students of today’s world, who are coming from an incredibly diverse range of backgrounds?
A good book speaks through the generations, but it also speaks through the generations of your own life – you’ll look at your favorite book differently at age 18 than you will at age 37. Similarly, the works we examine in GQ are not meant to be read once; they are meant to be read over the course of your life and will teach you different lessons each time you open them. In my section this semester, I have students aged 16-50 – no one has the same story as the other. So we have students who come from very difficult situations and these books mean one thing to them, and other students who are more privileged to whom they say something different.
I recently met with a student who is an American War veteran, and asked what they are getting out of the class. They said that they really relate to Odysseus, his journey of returning home from war, and trying to readjust to family life. I talked to another student who left their physics program at UT to follow their dream of being an English major; they relate to Telemachus (Odysseus’s son) and his coming-of-age journey. Works like The Odyssey are multi-dimensional, and while the actual content of the text speaks to people, our approach is also important: it’s to use them to teach students skills that will help them throughout college and in life. We’re relating Odysseus’ struggles in light of their own, and encourages them to talk about these things, not just with faculty but other students: what does it look like to set goals and make plans as 21st century community college students? What it means to fight the bureaucracy monster in school and the workplace? It’s so exciting to have a discussion based class with these students – I believe it’s what we need, as citizens of our country.
Do the seminars focus only on Western authors, or is it a priority to include literature from around the world?
There are two ways of thinking about diversity: there’s diversity of thought and discipline, and diversity of culture and geography. I think our curriculum is very diverse in both respects – in fact, none of the works we read in GQ were originally written in English, and each of our translated texts include the original language, and cover a span of time from Pre-history to the Renaissance.
This semester, we’re including a unit on Global Poetry & Religious Texts: we’ll start with writings from Euclid’s texts, and segway into Chinese poetry (students will examine a poetical and a literal translation of the original Chinese text, and will write their own poems in Chinese!). Then we’ll read the poems of Sappho, perhaps the most famous queer female writer of antiquity; none of her completed poetry has survived, and so students will fill in the gaps themselves. We’ll also read selections from the Koran, Rumi, the Hebrew Bible, St. John of the Cross, and the Bakti poets from India, whose works are essentially erotic poetry about God. Then we’ll examine how all of this relates back to Euclid: poetry, religious texts, and mathematics are all forms of human cognition that we use to try to ascertain the truth. We want students to understand that the same passion for wanting to know that we find in Rumi’s poetry, also exists in mathematics – and it’s fun!
Have you had any students who had never finished an entire book before enrolling in GQ?
I’m sure that there have been many. I know of at least one student in the program who had only ever read one other book cover to cover. But I suspect that many students have not been avid readers in the past, and for many of them it’s the first time they’ve been able to read many of these works. The benefit of reading something like The Odyssey cover to cover is that it’s something that most people in our society are at least vaguely familiar with it, but when you sit down to actually digest it, you see the whole narrative and all of the lessons it has to teach.
What would be the first step for a student interested in enrolling?
We’re offering 15 sections in the fall, one for each ACC campus (that’s the goal, anyway). There are no prerequisites. GQ counts as a Humanities course and is part of the Core Curriculum, so if you’re transfer-bound, it will transfer as a Humanities credit. It also meets the student success requirement for most degree plans – students whose degree plans don’t include this requirement will need to request a waiver to enroll. We are also offering a paired GQ course with developmental coursework, and students who participate will fulfill their remedial requirements and earn 3 credits at the same time.
GQ is for everybody – it’s not an Honors class, and it’s not reserved for an elite group. If you’re interested, you should enroll!
What do you find the most rewarding about your work in this project?
There are two things, really. The first is that it’s helped me improve greatly as a teacher of community college students. I’ve become much better acquainted with the trials and tribulations of our students, and it’s made me a more compassionate instructor. There’s still a misconception that students attend community college because they can’t handle a 4 year school, but that’s absolutely not the case: they’re here for many reasons, and they are hungry for enriching texts – and it’s proven that core texts are far more engaging than textbooks. Secondly, the faculty training aspect of the program has been very rewarding. Being able to collaborate with my colleagues from across disciplines, see the talent across our school, and collaborate on college-wide projects is truly a privilege, and something we need to do more often. Faculty’s ability to collaborate with each other and care about student success equals increased student success. So far, it’s worked out pretty well! None of this would have happened if the program faculty hadn’t been devoted to its success.
In your own words, why is it important to for students (or anyone else) to read a whole book?
When you watch a film, you are exploring at the pace of the creator of that film. You don’t have an opportunity to pause at the character’s thought, and consider how it relates to your life. You swallow a film whole and then digest. With a book, you ingest it little by little and savor it. With a book, you become a collaborative partner in the creative act of authorship when you allow yourself the time and patience to read a book cover to cover. You become part of a story – the way you picture something happening in the text is unique to you. In discussion of the text with others, it takes on different meaning for everyone. To develop the practice of sitting with a text and getting from page 1 to 288 will assist us in other areas of our lives where we need patience and follow through.