A WORLD OF POSSIBILITY
BARBARA BLACK,
Professor of English
BarBara Black vividly recalls the year her older Brother, an intellec-
tual historian, came home to write his dissertation. one day they escaped to an aban-
doned stone quarry on the outskirts of town and read Jean-Paul sartre out loud to one
another. she loved it!
a decade later, she would spend a memorable year completing her own dissertation on
museums in 19th-century london. says Black, “it was a romance, the great love of my
life—a year of pure passion.”
“i’m passionate about teaching the 19th century because i feel it’s the emergent century
for our own way of living,” says Black. “industrialization, the rst techno-culture, social
networks such as the postal service, an increasingly urban existence. Progress to be
sure, but at what price? My students learn that they’re not the rst to wrestle with this
and other big questions. literature is often about trouble and transformation. it’s the
arena of all that is possible.”
passion
IS EXCITEMENT, POSSIBILITY, AND LOVE.
