Tim Spears
College Professor
- Office
- Axinn 202
- Tel
- (802) 443-5318
- spears@middlebury.edu
- Office Hours
- Fall 2023: In Axinn 202- Tuesday 1:00 to 3:00 PM, Wednesday 2:00 to 4:00PM, and by appointment.
Tim Spears has been a member of the Middlebury faculty since 1990. He received his B. A. from Yale University and did his graduate work at Harvard University in the History of American Civilization. He has taught a wide range of classes, including courses on consumer culture, Chicago, regional and Southern literature, the Everglades, and football and higher education. Spears is the author of 100 Years on the Road: The Traveling Salesman in American Culture (1995), Chicago Dreaming: Midwesterners and the City, 1871 to 1919 (2005), and Spirals: A Family’s Education in Football (2018). He was also a Senior Consulting Editor for The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia, a large public history reference guide that Indiana University Press published in 2006. He is currently working on a photographic study of the national cemetery system.
Courses Taught
AMST 0215
Football and Higher Education
Course Description
Football and Higher Education
Football originated on US campuses, and its 150-year history reflects the vibrant, uneasy relation between sports and higher education. The first "big time" college sport in the United States, football became a media spectacle in the 1890s, and since then critics have debated the game's violence, educational merits, commercial trappings, and bearing on college admissions policies. The course will move from the 19th century to the present, tracing the sport's cultural meanings, its relation to class identity and gender roles, and its educational mission, including the sport's regulation by the NCAA. We will take an interdisciplinary approach to these issues, and readings may include literary and secondary works by Steve Almond, Owen Johnson, Dave Meggyesy, and Michael Oriard. 3 hrs. lect.
Terms Taught
Requirements
AMST 0264
Chicagoland
Course Description
Chicagoland
In this course we will explore Chicago’s significance by focusing on its physical and spatial character. Moving from the 19th to the 21st century, we will examine the 1871 fire; the 1893 World’s Fair; the settlement house movement; the rise of modern architecture; the emergence of Black Chicago and development of a multi-ethnic, multi-class metropolis spread across various neighborhoods and suburbs; and recent planning efforts to revitalize the city as a space for all Chicagoans. Interdisciplinary in scope, the course will draw on a range of texts and theoretical perspectives to show the generative importance of Chicago’s rich and varied landscape. 3 hrs. lect.
Terms Taught
Requirements
AMST 0294
Hemingway's Outsized Life
Course Description
Hemingway's Outsized Life
In this class we will explore the work of Ernest Hemingway, a writer whose literary style and heroic self-construction remain a source of fascination and controversy. Through a mostly chronological reading of his writings, we will examine Hemingway’s emergence as a pioneering modernist and member of the 1920s “lost generation,” his portrayal of war and violence, and his representations of gender, race, and “American-ness.” Assigned texts will include short stories, novels, and autobiographical works, as well as critical studies (including Ken Burns’ recent documentary film) that consider the impact of Hemingway’s life and writing on broader U.S. cultural history.
Terms Taught
Requirements
AMST 0500
Current
Upcoming
Independent Study
Course Description
Independent Study
Select project advisor prior to registration.
Terms Taught
AMST 0710
Upcoming
Honors Thesis
Course Description
Honors Thesis
For students who have completed AMST 0705, and qualify to write two-credit interdisciplinary honors thesis. on some aspect of American culture. The thesis may be completed on a fall/winter schedule or a fall/spring schedule. (Select a thesis advisor prior to registration)
Terms Taught
ENAM 0282
Reconstructing Literature
Course Description
Reconstructing Literature: Realism, Regionalism, and the American scene, 1870-1919 (Pre-1900 AL)
American literature evolved in the late 1800s as a new generation of writers portrayed a rapidly changing culture, transformed by urbanization, industrial growth, immigration, class tensions, new roles for women, shifting race relations, and demographic transformations that seemed to split the nation into city and country. While realism was an effort to describe “life as it is” and regionalism focused on the distinctive features of specific places, both modes of representation stemmed from historical forces that were reshaping the nation. Works to be covered may include fiction by William Dean Howells, Charles Chesnutt, Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, and Theodore Dreiser. 3 hrs. lect.
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENAM 0500
Special Project: Lit
Course Description
Special Project: Literature
Approval Required.
Terms Taught
ENGL 0282
Reconstructing Literature
Course Description
Reconstructing Literature: Realism, Regionalism, and the American scene, 1870-1919
American literature evolved in the late 1800s as a new generation of writers portrayed a rapidly changing culture, transformed by urbanization, industrial growth, immigration, class tensions, new roles for women, shifting race relations, and demographic transformations that seemed to split the nation into city and country. While realism was an effort to describe “life as it is” and regionalism focused on the distinctive features of specific places, both modes of representation stemmed from historical forces that were reshaping the nation. Works to be covered may include fiction by William Dean Howells, Charles Chesnutt, Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, and Theodore Dreiser. 3 hrs. lect. (Formerly ENAM 0282)
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENGL 0294
Hemingway's Outsized Life
Course Description
Hemingway's Outsized Life
In this class, we will explore the work of Ernest Hemingway, a writer whose literary style and heroic self-construction remain a source of fascination and controversy. Through a mostly chronological reading of his writings, we will examine Hemingway’s emergence as a pioneering modernist and member of the 1920s “lost generation,” his portrayal of war and violence, and his representations of gender, race, and “American-ness.” Assigned texts will include short stories, novels, and autobiographical works, as well as critical studies (including Ken Burns’ recent documentary film) that consider the impact of Hemingway’s life and writing on broader US cultural history. (Formerly ENAM 0294)
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENGL 0500
Upcoming
Special Project: Lit
Course Description
Special Project: Literature
Approval Required. (Formerly ENAM 0500)
Terms Taught
HIST 0264
Current
Chicagoland
Course Description
Chicagoland
In this course we will explore Chicago’s significance by focusing on its physical and spatial character. Moving from the 19th to the 21st century, we will examine the 1871 fire; the 1893 World’s Fair; the settlement house movement; the rise of modern architecture; the emergence of Black Chicago and development of a multi-ethnic, multi-class metropolis spread across various neighborhoods and suburbs; and recent planning efforts to revitalize the city as a space for all Chicagoans. Interdisciplinary in scope, the course will draw on a range of texts and theoretical perspectives to show the generative importance of Chicago’s rich and varied landscape. 3 hrs. lect.
Terms Taught
Requirements
INTD 0210
Current
Sophomore Seminar/Liberal Arts
Course Description
Sophomore Seminar in the Liberal Arts
The current pandemic, and all the questions it brings to the fore about what we value in a college experience, make this an ideal moment to consider the meaning and purpose of your liberal arts education. At the heart of this exploration will be a question posed by physicist Arthur Zajonc: “How do we find our own authentic way to an undivided life where meaning and purpose are tightly interwoven with intellect and action, where compassion and care are infused with insight and knowledge?” We will examine how, at this pivotal moment of decision making, you can understand your college career as an act of “cultivating humanity” and how you can meaningfully challenge yourself to take ownership of your intellectual and personal development. Through interdisciplinary and multicultural exploration, drawing from education studies and philosophical, religious, and literary texts, we will engage our course questions by way of student-led discussion, written reflection, and personal, experiential learning practices. In this way we will examine how a liberal arts education might foster the cultivation of an ‘undivided’ life, “the good life”, a life well-lived. (The course is open to sophomores and second semester first-year students. Juniors by permission only.)
Terms Taught
Requirements
INTD 1253
Living Liberal Arts
Course Description
Living Your Liberal Arts Education
In this course, we will explore how an education in the liberal arts and sciences may help one face -our complicated times with added resilience, compassion and curiosity. Our guiding question: how can your education help you live fully in this moment and cultivate a life of the mind—and spirit—that helps you address the challenges in the world around us? We’ll explore this question by way of discussion, written reflection and mindfulness practices and consider texts such as: Frankl, The Search for Meaning; Coates, Between the World and Me, Mandel, Station Eleven, Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air, and Martel, The Life of Pi. (This course is not open to students who have taken INTD 0210)
Terms Taught
Requirements