Damrosch Delivers, Dramatically

A typical day in Leo Damrosch's English 10a or 10b class can include his singing songs, reciting poetry and doing impressions of characters' voices. But he wasn't always so sensational in his lectures.

"When I began doing English 10, I did not understand how much Harvard students need performance," says Damrosch, who is the English department chair and has taught at Harvard for seven years. "My teaching style tends to be what people here call 'laid-back'. I realized I had to be more demonstrative."

Damrosch's dramatic flair could be compared to that of a figure he has studied for an upcoming book, James Naylor. Naylor was a leader of the British Quakers in the 17th century and was anything but austere.

"He allowed himself to be led into Bristol on a horse while women threw garments before him and called him Jesus," Damrosch says.

Although "the entire Parliament of England spent two weeks on this guy," Damrosch said, Naylor rarely receives more than a paragraph in histories of the period.

Damrosch's book, soon to be published, is called The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus and explores Naylor's writings, which are archived in Harvard's Houghton Library.

"What Naylor believed, just as Blake did long after him, was that if Christ forgives all our sins, then we are all, in a sense, perfect," Damrosch said, referring to one of his favorite poets.

The professor says his teaching and administrative schedule is so busy that he stole minutes and hours from it to research the book.

"I made up my mind if I do anything, it has to be something I can do in my spare time," he said, adding that the demands on Harvard professors to participate in the governance of the University are "just relentless."

In addition, since Harvard departments tend to be small, "it means that we always need to be spread thin. We tend to go for generalists."

Damrosch took an unlikely route to becoming a professor. Born in the Philippines, he spent part of World War II in a Japanese internment camp with his parents.

"My parents expected to die," he said. Although he was a toddler during the war, he does remember "the moment when we got out," when airborne troops performed a family rescue.

His family moved to Maine when he was eight years old. Although his mother had taught him before that, he did not attend school until the fourth grade.

A lack of early formal education has not impeded his career, however. He has published many books on 18th-century British literature.

When he teaches English 10 or seminars on the Enlightenment, Damrosch says his purpose is to make the students enjoy the literature they read.

"I try to give them an overview of the landmarks, and I try to insinuate quite a few things about how to read a literary text," Damrosch says.

He also tries to convey the idea that these texts are "beautiful," he said, although "that's thought to be old-fashioned humanistic belleslettrism, saying that something is beautiful."

On his wish-list for the future are perfecting his French in order to better read Rousseau and teaching a course on wit and humor in literature.

Because he has been persuaded to extend his term as department chair, however, and because he is the father of two young sons, Damrosch may not have time for those pursuits anytime soon.