"Transferring to MCLA was one of the greatest decisions I ever made. Being able to learn from and connect with the faculty and staff equipped me with greater networking capabilities/skills and the opportunity to use them outside of the institution, preparing me for the road ahead. Taking part and engaging in different clubs and organizations on campus helped to shape and guide me for countless opportunities."
Brandon Pender ’07 Research Analyst, Office of State Rep. Daniel E. Bosley ’76
David Langston, Professor Office: Mark Hopkins 104A Hours: Mon, Wed.: 9:00 Tues: 11:00 Phone: 662-5482
My teaching and research both focus on the suggestion that story telling is central to every social and cultural activity. My courses and scholarship bring the specifics of individual texts -- whether lyric poems, television advertisements, or epic films -- into conversation with larger patterns of storytelling. Every specific text is shaped by a big pattern, but more importantly the big pattern is being evaluated and changed by the individual text. Studying cultural message systems in this way means we need to understand social systems, to be savvy about political and artistic history, and to be judicious about the dynamics of artistic form.
My training has been varied: as an undergraduate, I majored in history, and then I pursued theology, philosophy, and modern literature in graduate school. But respect for close textual analysis is central to all those fields, and I consider the pleasures of close reading to be the beginning and end -- the motive and the goal -- of every formulation of cultural theory. I am currently completing a research project on Henry James's novel, The Golden Bowl.
Teaching at MCLA is always fresh and invigorating because the students raise insistent and interesting questions about the relevance and implications of their studies. The college is small enough that I get to know my students as individuals, and it is big enough to sustain a large collection of communities of interest.
