Graduate Mentoring Program Articles

Narratives From the Field: The ASLE Mentoring Program at Work

From ASLE News Spring 2005

In the last ASLE News, Henrik Otterberg and Mike Branch’s reflections offered an inspired example of the kind of exchange the Mentoring Program was designed to promote. In this issue, Jeanne Sokolowski and Scott Slovic provide another glimpse into the rewards of mentoring for both the mentee and the mentor.

Interested in the Mentoring Program? Contact me at mlong [at] keene [dot] edu.

—Mark C. Long, Keene State College,
Coordinator, ASLE Mentoring Program

I’m just starting my PhD program at Indiana University Bloomington and I come to the advanced study of literature with a slightly unusual background: I spent three years teaching in Japan and then one year doing research for my Master’s thesis in education on a Fulbright grant in Seoul, South Korea. Starting my program, I wondered how I could merge my interests in 20th century literature, Asian- American writers, and Japanese and Korean language and culture with a burgeoning interest in environmental studies.

I outlined what were fairly vague research interests and was excited when Dr. Long contacted me with the information that Dr. Slovic was willing to work with me. I first contacted Dr. Slovic and asked his opinions on a paper idea I was trying to formulate—something that had nothing to do with contemporary environmental writers, but rather with Uncle Tom’s Cabin. There was a great feeling of relief to know that there was someone I could run ideas past (other than my professor for the course, who, though an excellent teacher, was admittedly not conversant with environmental theory). Dr. Slovic suggested various approaches that might be useful, from looking at the novel in context of the pastoral and Georgic traditions to pairing my reading of the novel with the writings of Wendell Berry.

Funny coincidences can also arise. Over winter break, I wanted to get ahead with the reading for my spring courses, especially one in environmental criticism. Looking at the reading list, I found listed Humboldt’s Cosmos, and later recalled reading somewhere that Dr. Slovic, like me, had received a Fulbright: to research Humboldt in Germany!

— Jeanne Sokolowski, Indiana University Bloomington

As someone who has often benefited from generous mentoring, I never hesitate to return the favor whenever I’m given the opportunity. It’s interesting that Jeanne should mention my work on Alexander von Humboldt as a graduate student in Germany. It was during my 1986-87 stay at the University of Bonn that I first became fully aware of what it means to give and receive academic mentorship through my reading about Humboldt’s work as an intellectual patron for younger scientists and writers and through the generous gifts of conversation and books that I received from Germany’s foremost Humboldt scholar, Professor Hanno Beck. Professor Beck’s kindness and support helped me to appreciate, in retrospect, the attention I had received from Albert Gelpi and John Felstiner at Stanford and the guidance I was soon to receive from Bart St. Armand, my dissertation advisor at Brown. Later, when I was deliberating about my possible move to the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), Bart helped tilt me toward UNR by encouraging me to take a teaching job where I could work with Ph.D. students and in this way help guide future generations of ecocritics into the profession.

Here at UNR, none of my current students are particularly attuned to Asian or Asian-American literary or environmental issues, so I was excited to hear that Jeanne Sokolowski was looking for a mentor who shared her interests in these areas. As Jeanne mentions, our initial mentoring exchanges focused on her seminar paper about Uncle Tom’s Cabin, not Asia or contemporary literature. I tried to make it clear to her that I hadn’t read the novel closely for nearly twenty years, but I was still willing to brainstorm a bit over e-mail and offer some suggestions about how ecocritics might approach this work. She kindly considered my ideas and then proceeded to develop her own powerful idea about how the “reflexive relationship between agriculture and slavery” emerges in Stowe’s work.

It is always a pleasure to participate in give and take with energetic, committed scholars, whether these exchanges occur in one’s own department or via the more abstract medium of e-mail. I’m pleased to know that my support might have been helpful. I look forward to future correspondence on topics ranging from Alexander von Humboldt to Japanese environmental writing.

—Scott Slovic, Department of English, University of Nevada, Reno