Mountain Lion LUMINARY: Dr. Steve Harvey B y J essica L arson P hotograph B y S cott D ean
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The opening chapter of Dr. Harvey’s memoir titled “The Book of Knowledge” was recently selected for publication in the annual anthology “The Best American Essays 2013.”
Educator and scholar with a penchant for creative writing. Author of three collections of personal essays. Topnotch banjo, guitar and ukulele player. Young Harris College Professor of English Steve Harvey, Ph.D., looks impressive on paper, but his résumé isn’t what has been drawing students to take his classes for the past 38 years. Well, maybe the banjo playing has a little something to do with it. “I get to teach a class on the English ballads and often bring in my banjo to play Appalachian versions of the songs, which the students sing with me,” he said. A member of the regional folk group Butternut Creek and Friends, Dr. Harvey is used to having an audience for his music. “One student wrote on his evaluation that the best part of the class was my banjo playing.” It’s easy to assume that after several decades, he may have traded in his backwoods banjo for techier teaching aids. But that wouldn’t be quintessentially Dr. Harvey—or his students. “I wouldn’t be fooled by their cell phones and other gadgets,” he said. “They still appreciate in-depth, face-to-face conversations about what they read and care about. No school is a better setting for that than Young Harris.” Dr. Harvey came to YHC in 1976 after a fortuitous meeting with YHC professor emeritus and noted Georgia poet Bettie Sellers, the head of the Department of English at the time, at a writing conference. “Unfortunately, I am given to sleepwalking, and one night during the conference I found myself in my pajamas on the motel balcony,” he recalled. “I suspect I would not have gotten the job if Bettie had caught me, but I woke up before anyone noticed and slipped unseen back into my room.” When asked what makes YHC different than other schools, he said, “Even though it’s growing and the roads to Atlanta have improved, YHC is still smaller, cozier and more isolated than most colleges.” YHC’s natural setting has played a major role in Dr. Harvey’s writing, particularly in his book “Bound for Shady Grove” about his experience learning to play mountain banjo. “The instrument led me into gatherings deep in the hollows around here, which taught me a lot about my adopted home,” he explained. Dr. Harvey is also including more about his life as a teacher in the mountains in the memoir he’s currently crafting. “I was born in Kansas and grew up in New York, Illinois and New Jersey, but where I teach and live have been an important filter for my past,” he said. “Apparently I understand who I was more clearly if I see it in terms of the Georgia mountains.” When it comes to a writer like Dr. Harvey, the setting is everything. Even his ideal class would be held somewhere singular: the woods. “We would sit in a circle around dying flames telling ghost stories to get through the night,” he explained. “One person has the flashlight and shines it under his or her face to tell part of the story and then passes it on to another person to tell the next part, so that by the time the story is done we have all had our say and are scared to death.” Like the laurel-lined creeks, hardwood hills and gravel roads that have inspired Dr. Harvey and his students alike, his affinity for the outdoors isn’t going anywhere. Dr. Harvey—and his banjo—will continue to inspire students to trade in their cell phones for a front-row seat in one of the country’s most beautiful classrooms.
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