PROFESSOR DAN GUNN

I joined AUP in 1988. In those days, the University felt fairly improvised, but there was also a real sense of liberty. We had a small department, and I was told early on I would have the chance to teach all sorts of topics and texts outside my specialization. I received great encouragement from my colleagues Marc Pelen and Roy Rosenstein. They were both genuine comparatists, in the sense that they had an in-depth knowledge of several languages and literatures. After my time teaching at the École Normale Supérieure, where the curriculum drew on a set list of Anglo-American texts, it was hugely liberating to access a wider canon.

Teaching at AUP is never boring, because you have students from all over the world. I remember teaching someone whose first language was Hungarian and whose second language was Thai! In a way, AUP was a harbinger of what we’ve experienced over the last 30 years – an atomization of culture. There is no given sense of communal culture at the University, so you have to create that commonality. In English classes, I use themes such as “childhood” to encourage students to share their stories and learn from each other. You can’t assume anything about students’ replies.

I’ve also cherished contact with students outside the classroom. I’ve run countless study trips, and I’ve often kept in touch with students after they graduate. Several are now among my closest friends; they are people with whom I still work and am in daily contact, people whose careers I’ve followed, whom I’ve supported when necessary and from whom I’ve learned and benefitted. We continue to help each other thrive.

Since I arrived at AUP, the Department of Comparative Literature and English has grown dramatically. One of the great pleasures of AUP has been my colleagues. I employed good people who employed good people in turn. It’s always a pleasure to see my colleagues again after the summer. There’s a real sense of friendliness and of sharing among a group of talented people. We often read and provide feedback on each other’s work. I sense almost no rivalries between faculty, which is rare in academia. We’ve also created a greater diversity of courses, including the creative writing major, which has influenced academic work across the department. Then there’s the Center for Writers & Translators, which was set up in 2007 to promote literary activity, primarily as it relates to translation. All of this has led to a greater sense of security, which has in turn led to increased creative freedom and a commitment to long-term projects. The Cahiers Series – a journal that makes new explorations in writing, translating and the areas between – has now reached number 37. My biggest project, the Beckett Letters, was the result of three decades of scholarship. I’m now working on the letters of Muriel Spark, and that’s going to take years too.

It is that sense of constant creation that makes AUP so exciting. I never wanted to be part of a big institution; I wanted more room for improvisation than that would have permitted. There’s a sense of lightness at AUP that certainly feels like freedom. There’s an academic freedom in what I teach and in the examples I use in class, there’s a freedom that comes from living in a big city like Paris, and then there’s the freedom to be part of a diverse community that doesn’t judge you. At AUP, there is no norm.