Ingrid Tague Interview
Rebekah Shultz Colby

Professor Ingrid Tague, chair of the History Department, is remarkable for being both a dedicated scholar and an innovative teacher. She co-taught a class with Martha Santos entitled Issues in World History: Deviant Women a course in which she used primary texts to encourage students to think critically about how both history and the roles of women get constructed. She is also currently working on a book about 18th century pets. In this interview, we discuss how she approaches her own research and writing and how she utilizes her own writing process to teach writing in her history classes.

Rebekah Shultz Colby: What do you think [is] the role writing plays in learning for undergraduate education?

Ingrid Tague: Well, probably the most significant role is not unique to undergraduates. Its that people actually think through writing. I think most of the time people dont really understand what it is that they want to say, what argument they want to create, until they go through that process of writing it down. So, I try to get students to realize that thats whats happening. And so, for instance, when they write a first draft, the argument that theyre saying theyre making in the introduction is not the argument that theyre making by the end of the paper. They have to allow themselves time to go back and change the argument in the introduction, so that it reflects what they actually are arguing. So, I think its that process that writing things down is how you go through that process of thinking things through. And I think that theres no better way to know what you really think about an idea until youve actually gone through that process of writing. . . . I do think that its a hard thing for undergraduates to understand that their writing is not a one shot deal. That writing is not about getting a certain number of words on a certain number of pages.

So do you allow revision in your class?

Depending on the class. In the class Im teaching now, I actually assign them weekly essays. And theyre short essays. Theyre two to three pages long, but they are formal essays. And those are due on the day of the readings that we discuss in class the readings they are writing about. So, they havent actually talked about the readings in class before they write the essays. And I do that on purpose because then they come to class prepared to talk about the issues. But because theyre weekly essays, I find that most students, if they try to get into revisions, end up just getting terribly behind. So, for them, I just say, Look, I grade on improvement. For your next essay, youll get better. And thats how I do it.

When I assign fewer, longer essays, I encourage revisions then. Although a lot of times, I encourage students to think in terms of drafts rather than in terms of revision because I find that, once theyve got the grade and my comments on their papers, they often think, Well, if I fix the two things that you told me to do, my grade should go from a C to an A. Or that they tend to see things in terms of working toward a particular grade and focusing specifically on the things that I have mentioned. Whereas I find that if I can get them to give me a draft, and then I talk about what they need to talk through and address in those drafts, they think to actually focus more on the way that they are thinking and the way that they are writing rather than focusing on the particular grade that theyre getting.

How would you describe your own writing process?

Slow. Excruciating. I love to have written. The writing itself is a nightmare. My drafts when I do start out really are a process of getting words down on paper as much as possible, as fast as possible, without really worrying about what Im doing with it. So, I dont create elaborate outlines. I usually have a sense of this is what I want to argue. These are my main points that I want to make. And then I accumulate all the evidence that I have thats relevant to anything that Im saying. Then, I tend to start off with a paragraph with a topic sentence thats saying where Im going, and then there are 75 examples. And then the next thing, there are another 75 examples. And then I go back and weed out and figure out, Okay, these are the ones that I really need to use, these are the ones that make the most sense, I need to spend more time actually talking about whats going on in these, and this is how I can forward my argument. For me, its because I really hate to write. Anything that gets me to write words on screen is a useful thing because, for me, the hardest thing is the beginning.

And so I never begin in the beginning. I always begin in the middle because the beginning is too daunting for me. Its too much for me. It needs to be more eloquent or more sophisticated, or I need to know where Im going. And because, as I said, I dont figure out where Im going until Im going through that process of writing, I find that its better for me to start in the middle. And then I can figure out, okay, this thing that I thought was going to be really interesting and significant, I cant really say very much about. And this other thing that I thought was going to be minor, I am spending pages on. And, again, I dont usually realize that thats whats going on until Ive done that writing process.

And for me, a lot of it is physical. I cant revise on screen. I have to print everything out. I use red felt-tip marker to revise. I do a lot of actual scissor and tape moving around of material. And I just ink it up, print it out again, and ink it up again. I waste reams of paper. Im bad for the environment. But its the only way that I can do it. I find that the amount of revision that I can do on screen is absolutely minimal. I need to be able to see things physically in relation to each other. I need to hold a piece of paper in my hand and be able to see that ten pages later this is where Im going to go.

Thats fascinating. Ive heard of other writers who do the same thing. Why do you think you do it that way?

A lot of it I think is because Ive got a really lousy memory. I know theres a certain irony in a historian with a really lousy memory, but its true. I have a very, very bad memory. Part of the reason I need to assemble every single example of everything is because I dont remember that it exists unless Ive got it in front of me. And again, I lose myself in my own writing unless I can physically say, Go back to page four. And if I have page four, and I have page six, and I can move that stuff around, I find that thats the only way I can keep that stuff in my head. When I move that stuff on screen, I get lost. I dont remember where I am actually physically within what it is that I am writing. So, really, Id love to say that its because I think visually or something like that, but really its because I have a terrible memory. Its the only way in which I can remember whats going on in my own work.

What do you think a teacher at DU who is interested in writing should teach about writing?

I guess for me it really would be that connection between writing and thinking. Thinking about writing as part of the thought process would probably be the most important thing. That its not the product. Or again, its not just about just getting something down on paper.

I guess then, at an even more basic level, that writing is hard and that writing is hard for everyone always. And if you find writing very easy, you probably arent doing it very well or you arent pushing yourself as hard as you should be. No one takes a physics class with the expectation that they should just breeze through it.

But people do tend to expect that about writing.

Yeah, I think students think, Well, Ive been doing writing since high school. Ive been doing writing all my life, so I ought to be able to do it. And I dont think they think about science in the same way. Theyve been doing science since elementary school, but the kind of science that students do in college is different from the kind of science that they do in high school or the kind of science that they do in grade school. And I think people get that. But I dont think they realize that writing is similar. That writing is hard. Its always going to be difficult, and theres no reason it should be easy.

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