Spontaneous reaction
Prof wants 'human element' in classroom
By RUTH ROHRER
You can't tell someone about Quinn.
You have to be there—be with him. Because, like the philosophy he himself expounds, human contact alone can give you full appreciation of a great teacher.
His students say you must know him or have a class from him to truly appreciate him. They talk about Professor Dennis Quinn, and the campus knows him well now, as the teacher given the H. Bernard Fink Award for excellence in classroom teaching last year.
ANYONE CAN LOOK in the college catalog and find that he is an associate professor of English, receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1958. Upperclassmen tell freshmen to be sure to take him.
His dialogue manner of teaching, based upon a significant question and spontaneous reaction from the students, is a result of his philosophy that the human element must be present.
But what can't be read or told is his teaching. His ideas are here in print, but Quinn would say that words mean nothing without the human experience.
"I try to come into class with a significant question," Quinn says. "I never know what response I will get. I do my best work when something new comes up and a question rises spontaneously in the class."
"I WANT TO KNOW what the class wants to know," he says. "I find students interested in serious subjects and the pursuit of truth."
Therefore, Quinn doesn't present prepared, formal lectures to his classes.
"The only way to learn is through some sort of dialogue," Quinn says. "The student comes to know something by personal contact with another person. You can't have a personal encounter with a book."
OBVIOUSLY HIS method of
teaching is successful for as one of his students said, "He guides your mind so that you see how he arrives at his ideas and it is
DENNIS QUINN
"... You can't have a personal encounter with a book."
always such a revelation. Quinn, himself, is a revelation, she said. "All of his classes deal with the most profound and basic elements in everyday living. They are ideas you sense at times but that you never could quite define before."
However, Quinn says, "I am not trying to stimulate students especially. I try to talk about what is relevant to me and I find that the students find it relevant to them also in some immediate way."
"Poets have always represented genuine human concerns—love, death, courage and God," Quinn says. "These issues interest both students and me."
QUINN, WHO CALLS himself an existentialist of the Kierkegaard variety rather than the
Sarte variety, teaches 17th-century poetry, Shakespeare, English literature before 1800 and literary aspects of the King James Bible.
"The differences between the time of John Donne and the metaphysical poets and our own time are not as important as the likenesses," he says. "Above all, what I try to show is that the poets of this period are relevant to our experience now. I am not very much interested in teaching the historical approach to literature for historical background is available in books."
The man, Quinn, and the subjects he teaches cannot be separated. A course from Quinn seems to have more meaning to the student than a course in 17th century poetry. Instead of saying "my English course," students usually call it "my Quinn course."
"The subject that has interested me most in the last few years has been human love," Quinn says.
office are representative of his intense study in this area. He, his wife and their three children—ages, 9, 11, and 13—spent a year in Spain in 1962 where he was researching biblical commentaries on a Fulbright grant.
Quinn feels a close affinity with
with the subjects he teaches. For example, he says of John Donne, "I share a lot of intellectual, religious, and personal interests with him."
A CATHOLIC CONVERT, Quinn says the main influences upon his life have been persons—his wife Eva, friends, and teachers—and his religion.
Another interest, closely aligned to the first is the Greek, Roman, and Hebraic Christian tradition. "The Bible is great literature," Quinn says, "it concerns itself with all the vital issues of human life. My particular specialty is Biblical commentaries on the Psalms—the very earliest up until the 17th century."
QUINN IS considered by some persons to be an authority on certain areas of the Bible. However, Quinn himself says, "The field of biblical literature is so vast that I am really nothing more than a highly - trained, well - informed amateur."
The Bibles and biblical commentaries lining the walls of his
In spite of his many interests and areas of research, Quinn, who came to KU in 1958, says, "All I have wanted to do is simply to be a good teacher."
Daily Kansan
Tuesday, December 6, 1966
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