Matthew Panciera

 “I try to give them all the tools and opportunities for real learning, and I want them to ultimately not need me as a teacher”

What are your areas of research and teaching expertise?

I have 3 areas of research expertise: Pompeian graffiti, Carmina Epigraphica Latina (Latin for “poetic inscriptions in Latin”, especially epitaphs), and Latin pedagogy. 

As for teaching expertise, there is a way in which a faculty member in a small Classics department like Gustavus has to be able to teach anything and everything well. I have taught every kind of class from first term seminars for freshmen on Pompeii or the whole history and culture of the west from Gilgamesh to the Renaissance, to courses on ancient theater and mythology, to our senior seminar on Greek and Roman Egypt, to all levels of Latin (I mostly don’t teach Greek here – only when I am teaching for the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome), though I especially like the beginning and intermediate Latin courses. 

What is your teaching style?

I would say that I try to hit the (small) sweet spot where I ask the students to apply a level of discipline and rigor that will enable them to develop insight and understanding (because nothing worth knowing comes without some effort) while prioritizing what is truly significant in whatever subject we are studying, and  inspiring a joy and excitement for discovering something together in real time together (because for most of us learning is much better as a social rather than solitary activity). What that means on a practical level is that I set the bar high and expect a lot from my students. I try to give them all the tools and opportunities for real learning, and I want them to ultimately not need me as a teacher. I love being in a classroom where the students are excited and raring to interact and discuss. It has always been true for me, but more since the pandemic, or maybe just as I have gotten older, that a teacher’s time with the students in the classroom is sacred. It ought to be regarded as a gift by them and me, no sleepwalking allowed. Whether I achieve that most days, you’ll have to ask my students.

Describe your “lightbulb moment.”

A lightbulb moment for me? I don’t know if I can limit myself to just one moment on just one aspect of my career! I can think back on a few moments when I realized that I really liked classics and Latin as a student — a class on art in 5th century Athens, a Greek class on Homer, reading the comedies of Plautus, but especially performing a few of them in graduate school, a course on Latin inscriptions. I have also had some lightbulb moments doing research, especially on Latin graffiti when it felt like I was staring through a window at the ancient Pompeians and could see and understand them as if they were people I was interacting with in the modern world. 

And I have lightbulb moments in teaching every semester! That’s what makes teaching such an endlessly interesting line of work. Let me describe one for this most recent semester. I am teaching a Greek and Roman theater class, with some of my favorite plays. We started with Sophocles: Oedipus Tyrannos, Antigone, Ajax, Philoctetes. These are not easy plays but I love them because they have so many interesting questions that I really wanted the students to engage with. So I decided to make the main writing assignment a daily journal where they would have to write at least 500 words in response to one of my big questions for that day. These are questions that often ask them, in the spirit of journal writing, to apply these big questions to their own lives. If they fulfill these simple instructions on time, they get full credit (100%) for the journal assignment, which is a major component of the final grade. In years past I would have asked for 1 or 2 more formal essays and I certainly would have looked upon a journal with a simple word limit for 100% as too lax. Silly me! To my amazement I have seen in their writing more high level engagement with the important questions raised by the text than any other class I have ever taught at Gustavus. I have to live and work for another 30 years so that I can discover all the things about teaching that I should have figured out long ago!      

What do you enjoy outside the classroom?

I like to cook and hang out with my family in the evenings watching television and movies. Despite the miserable quality of my scoring, I have enjoyed golf in the past. I like to fish with my friend Rick. And although I have been in Minnesota for 22 years, I am going to the BWCA for the first time this fall. 

What tips do you have for student success? 

Work hard, work smart, go see your professors for help (all the Gustavus professors I know would be delighted to meet with you outside of class), don’t procrastinate (but if I knew how to teach others (or myself) how to do this last one I would be a rich man. 

What campus traditions are your favorite?

Passing out diplomas at graduation; going to see women’s hockey, taking my senior seminar to Patrick’s.

What is your favorite author/book?

Homer (Odyssey, Iliad, in that order), Sophocles, Thucydides, Herodotus, Petronius, and all the writers, mostly anonymous, of graffiti and inscriptions throughout the Roman world.

What is your favorite class to teach?

Beginning Latin.

Where is your favorite place on campus/in St Peter?

Old Main, the library, Patrick’s, the Food Co-op.