Alba Newmann
                                                                     Writing Lecturer, Poetry PhD

Where did you get your undergraduate degree? What was your major? Where did you get your Masters and PhD and what was it in?

I went to the University of Chicago as an undergraduate and majored in the Humanities. The program allowed us to mix and match our emphases I focused on literature in Spanish (especially twentieth-century Latin American lit) and creative writing. When I was done with my B.A., I was tired, especially of school; U of C was very intense. I think I may have worked harder there than I did through much of graduate school. After three years in the working world, however, school sounded like a great option again. I completed my MA and PhD at the University of Texas in Austin. It was a really rewarding experience. My work focused again on twentieth-century literature, but this time on American poetry. I also began teaching while I was in Texas both writing and literature classes.

What do you enjoy most about writing?

My dad is a painter. A number of years ago he and I were speaking about his work the call to paint; and he explained to me that painting is his clearest way of thinking. I really appreciated that description I think I like writing because it is my clearest form of thinking. Whether I am writing poetry, analyzing the works of others, or examining something in the world that has caught my attention writing focuses my attention; it allows me to work through and rework my thinking: what I am seeing, what I am trying to say. I like that it is usually a solitary endeavor while I am writing, but then it goes out into the world, where it becomes a collaborative process with my readers.

Briefly, how would you describe your teaching philosophy?

This is a timely question, as Ive been thinking about my teaching with almost every waking hour in the past few months.

I think teaching is a privilege. I really do. It is also hard work, as hard as it is to be a student, I think. And perhaps harder for me: I had over twenty years to perfect the role of student. I am only about eight years into the role of teacher . . . every quarter is a revelation.

As a teacher, I would say my philosophy is to try and foster an environment of respect for ideas. If you talked to one of my students today, they could tell you my favorite question to ask them about their writing is: why? (or, sometimes, how?). I want to know why people think the way they do, and I want to help them be able to articulate their own ideas, give their own claims credence and development. The traditional classroom sets up such deeply entrenched hierarchies this is something I struggle with. I want everyone in the room to be taking their thinking and writing seriously; but I dont want to be the writing enforcer. As a faculty, we have talked about the names or roles we would like to be given when helping students with their writing (coach, consultant, etc.). Id like to be a sounding board and a guide. I think I am still discovering the many ways in which the power of effective writing can be brought into the classroom and made engaging for students.

What drew you to become a writing teacher?

In college, I had a Calculus teacher who was really good at math. Really good. But he was not very good at teaching it, because he was so good at it himself Calculus was so intuitive for him, that he didnt have a broad vocabulary of ways to explain it to those of us for whom it was not intuitive. I have thought about this with regards to my teaching of writing. I can write well (not everything I produce is a mind-boggling work of genius, but writing is something I feel competent and confident about), and I am glad to have a set of skills and experiences that allows me to do this. You wouldnt want to be taught by someone who isnt good at what they are teaching. However, teaching writing requires a level of mindfulness that writing, on its own, may not. This is a roundabout way of explaining what drew me to teaching writing. I like writing very much, and it is easy for me to get excited about it. Teaching writing is like drawing back the green velvet curtain and taking a good look at the wizard: asking yourself questions about your own processes, how you came to be the writer you are, and how you can come up with as many ways as possible to help students achieve their own levels of proficiency (and enthusiasm, with any luck), even if they are not going to go by the same paths and byways you took in getting there.

What are your hobbies and outside interests, or, as Doug puts it, guilty pleasures?

As a kid, I had several career paths in mind: first, I wanted to be an archeologist, and then, I wanted to be a marine biologist (and finally, about the age of eleven or twelve, I decided I wanted to be a writer). The first two of these had a lot to do, I think, with growing up in the Southwest and going potshard and fossil hunting with my mom. We spent a lot of time walking and watching the ground for clues. As a child in Santa Fe, the distant past and the ocean were two of the most mysterious things I could imagine; and to find their traces in my desert home, you had to pay attention. I still walk and watch the ground, but what I am looking for now has expanded to include botany and traces of urban archeology found objects, unfamiliar plants and flowers. I am an amateur naturalist. I still am fascinated by the ocean . . . in fact, that interest will be finding its way into my 1133 classes this coming quarter.

Name an unusual or little-known fact about yourself.

People are often curious about my first nameso I will share the history of its origins:
Alba means dawn in Spanish; it also means white in Latin (as many botanists have been happy to tell me this is why plants with white blossoms often have alba in their taxonomic names). Both roots of the word have to do with the emanation of light. In the Catholic church there is a prayer thanking god for the new day, called an alba. Ginsberg, the poet, also wrote a piece called My Alba. My parents chose this name for me for these reasons, but for others, especially. My father grew up in Colombia, where Alba was a relatively common girls name. As a young man, he was fascinated with Goyas paintings, and particularly with his portrait of the Duchess of Alba. When my parents were in their twenties, they traveled together through Europe, stopping for a time in a village in France called Alba La Roche . . . all of these factors combined to give me my name, or so the family mythology goes.

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