UNM Connections; 208; Monica Cyrino

Hello, I'm Valerie Suntianis. For this episode of UNM Connections, we decided to leave the K&M East studios and shoot our program at Dane Smith Hall here at the University of New Mexico campus. We'll be visiting with one of UNM's most popular professors, Monica Serrino, an associate professor of the classics in the UNM Department of Foreign Languages and Literature. Dr. Serrino came to UNM nine years ago as a visiting professor and was charged with developing courses in Greek and Roman culture and civilization. Since then, she's captured UNM students' imaginations by teaching classics with a twist of pop culture.

Hundreds of students enroll in Monica Serrino's classes every year, a 1997 poll conducted by the Daily Lobo, UNM's student-run newspaper voted her best teacher at UNM, and last year the National Classics Organization honored Serrino with its Excellence in Teaching Award. Join me as we explore the unique and exciting ways UNM students are learning about the classics. Next, on UNM Connections. Hello, Monica and welcome to the show. Monica, you are an associate professor at the University of New Mexico and you teach

the classics. I understand that in the last few years you've seen these courses gain considerably in popularity to what do you attribute that? Well, mostly hard work on my part. There's really been a combination of different effects, one of them is of course students are incredibly cany consumers and once they attend a class that they enjoy, they're going to tell everybody else. So I've had this sort of multiplicity of word of mouth going around so that the classes have grown considerably, and I also think it has a lot to do with my approach which is needless to say, a little untraditional given especially a very traditional discipline like classics. Even the word sort of denotes, you know, like God, I guess it's time to fall asleep now. Something that's dodgy. Something staunchy, starchy, old fashioned stuff way back when it doesn't have any application to us today.

And I've sort of made it my goal pedagogically as a teacher to bring the same kind of joy and relevance that I feel in studying the discipline. I mean, I don't do it myself, you know, to train trick students or something. It's the same joy and interest that I feel in reaching my life that I'm trying to share with them. So what is the connection between modern culture and these very, very old cultures that so many of us don't really know anything about? What's the connection? Well, there are several connections on several different levels, some academics, some psychological, some, you know, very generic in the sense of between genres, some political. And I try and explore all of those connections. The one that seems the most interesting or the one that seems to really grasp students is when you show them that in fact, there is nothing new, you know, under the sun, me, he'll know them subsole or whatever, as the Romans said first, there's nothing new. Every story gets told, you know, over and over again.

And when students realize that what they're experiencing is not so much something completely new, that there are resonances for them, that's what makes it a much more captivating subject. So there are several levels. I mean, one is, of course, politically, the Greco-Roman world had a lot of influence on our world as modern nation states, you know, the United States, for example, you know, to take us as an example. Another relevance that I try and explore mostly as a literary scholar is between what the Greeks and the Romans said about things that are still important to us today and important to the average University of New Mexico student. That is, of course, sex, power, family, love, all of those big sort of words with capital letters. When the students see that, in fact, those stories are very relevant to what they're going through every day as young adults in our modern day culture, I think that at first they're sort of astonished and then they're delighted that they can see these things recaptured

again for them in another culture. It's kind of comforting, I think, on some level to them to see, wow, you know, what I'm going through, you know, people, humans have gone through, you know, for generations. So the human experience is still very much like it was thousands of years ago. Yeah, it is. With obviously, you know, slight, you know, cultural modifications and we've obviously, you know, we consider ourselves more enlightened on certain topics and actually that's also a fun way to approach it as well. You know, students obviously think their own culture is, you know, the best and the peak of existence. And sometimes when you explain to them, you know, things used to be like this and people approached it this way, you know, little light bulbs go off and it sort of helps them understand how other cultures can, you know, be at least maybe more optimal in certain areas and not to be so, you know, focused on their culture. But yeah, it has something to do with the enduring human condition. And I think that that's, you know, the most sort of interesting lesson that you can share

with your students today that, you know, especially young adults, you know, you know, adolescents 18, you know, to 28 or whatever they are here at UNM. We have lots of students from different ages, but, you know, they tend to think, you know, everything they're going through, they're going through, you know, all by themselves for the first time. Exactly. And one has ever felt this way before. No, one is, you know, and sometimes when they encounter the way, you know, other, you know, lovers or, you know, people with the same problems, you know, that they have dealt with it. And very eloquently, I mean, the stuff survives to us because it's good, you know, obviously we don't have the trashy stuff. Well, we have some of that trashy stuff too, which is interesting, but, you know, we have all this stuff because it's sort of startling comments about, you know, recurring human predicaments. And students, I think, are just captivated by it. It seems that we've made progress in enlightening them or letting them sort of lead themselves to self-enlightenment, you know, I know that sounds kind of funny, but what I have found

in my, you know, almost 10 years now of teaching this and then for a few years before in graduate school is that what I'm doing is sort of reminding students of something that they know about, you know, reflected through Greco-Roman culture and these ancient poets and all that, but they sort of, you know, what I see happening to them is like, you know, wow, you know, that's, you know, I knew that. You know, somebody else said that or did that, you know, there seems to be this kind of process of recollection, whatever you want to call it, but that's, and that's been sort of, you know, startling to me as a teacher that, you know, I'm going to tell you something all about this culture and they know, you know, it's been kind of interesting and something that's evolving with me and helping me in my teaching as well to use that, to use what students know already about culture themselves as cultural citizens, right? So, when you make that connection between the way we live now or the way we are now to the way things were then that helps to draw students in.

Yeah, it does. I mean, they come into class probably, you know, having heard, oh, you know, Professor Serino is interesting and she tells a lot of jokes, you know, which I do, you know, it's got to be fun for me too, you know, and they, I think what they get if this is not overstating what they get out of a class is a sense of, a sense of, you know, a sense of something that's reminded them of something that they're interested in before. I mean, I've never met a student, you know, who said after my class, you know, that just didn't mean anything to me, you know, it's usually quite the opposite, like, you know, wow, I, you know, I read a little Greek mythology when I was a kid or, you know, I saw these movies on TV or I really enjoyed, you know, you know, costume dramas or whatever. But they, when they come in and they learn a little of the history and the literature, literary history, you know, they find that they've, you know, sort of gotten in touch with something about themselves, you know, which has really been startling to me, you know,

I sort of thought I was going to teach, you know, epic literature or whatever. And all of a sudden, I'm having this kind of awakening with students, all of us together kind of discovering stuff about ourselves through a bunch of, you know, funny Greeks and Romans. So it's been kind of a learning experience for me too. Why do you think it's important that people know what happened so many centuries ago? Well, you know, the common answer or the traditional answer, I guess, would be that, you know, those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, right? I forget someone famous said that. And that's part of it, you know, we like to show students, you know, historical patterns and so on and literary, historical patterns, you know, people have written this way and so on. And, you know, in a traditional educational experience, a student who understands a little bit about these cultures really has a lot of tools of analysis and application, you know, to take it then to other cultures in studying English or Latin American literature or even Asian literature, you know, any other cultures, you receive tools, you know, to apply.

I might, you know, be a little radical and also stating that I think why it's important and why I've made, you know, my life's career, my life's work in studying these cultures and exploring ways of making them relevant to students today is because they did say something that nobody else said. They did do something that nobody else did and when students see that, what they see is really the, you know, the, the sort of, you know, magical extremes that humanity can reach. I mean, for good and for bad, I mean, I'm not saying that everything was great and rosy in the ancient world. It wasn't at all. But, you know, what they see is sort of like humanity, you know, exaggerated, you know, and so that's why it seems to me that, you know, all of a sudden I'm seeing this more and more, that students are learning about themselves and their humaneness and the extremes that they go to. That might be kind of a radical thing to say and I'm not sure that many classes would say that but that's been what I've discovered in the last couple of years and it's sort

of, you know, shaking me up a little too. But you also teach languages, you teach Greek and Latin and you are finding that there's a lot of interest in what many people think of as dead languages. Yes. Oh, they're absolutely not dead languages. I mean, they're literary languages in the sense that nobody speaks them though I'm sure that some high school teachers do still try and speak Latin in class, which I think they should do. It's kind of fun. But, yeah, it's been a sort of an uncanny thing. I don't know if it's part of a general national trend. If it has something to do with us as New Mexicans, you know, getting in touch with our heritage through the study of Latin language, it seems to be a byproduct too of students taking my larger classes, studying the ancient world. You know, we read several books and poems in translation and then a few of them just say, wow, you know, I need to read this in the original language. So our language program is very strong.

We have, you know, several sections of Latin every semester being offered, you know, always trying to make it more popular even and it seems like the culture classes, the big classes in the language classes are now working themselves into a nice, you know, symbiotic relationship where the two kind of feed off each other. So yeah, we're really excited about that. So there is quite, there are quite a few students taking Latin and Greek, ancient Greek is even actually pretty strong here too. You might be surprised. Now, you're going to try something new in the next semester. You're going to try to bring in a third component to this plan, wanted to tell a little bit about that. You're talking about the film choir? Yeah, it's actually a current experiment. So it's happening right now. This semester, I have decided, I just got tenure recently, actually an associate professor now. It sounds really, really sort of, you know, serious, I hope I get, you know, a discount at the Century Rio or something, you know, now that I'm senior faculty.

But what I'm doing now that I have a little bit more time is developing new ways to make contemporary applications between the ancient world and the modern world. And one of those ways has been through the use of film. And this is completely, you know, personal subjectivity on my part, I grew up in L.A. I'm a fanatic about movies and I've always loved movies and it's been something that I've always wanted to do. So what we're doing in the new film course, Big Screen Roam, is an exploration of the way ancient Rome and the myth of Rome as the city of, you know, passion and decadence and violence and glamour and so on, has been used by various filmmakers throughout the late 20th century, starting, you know, with the Cold War epics in the 50s. I think in this course, I go all the way up through some of the comedies in the early 80s and explore the way those filmmakers use ancient Rome as, in the myth of Rome as a backdrop, you know, a subtext to say something about their modern culture.

So we're looking at it with three different levels. The ancient level, the time that the films were produced, the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, you know, all very, you know, very political and turbulent times. And then also, what are they saying now, you know, to students at the dawn of the 21st century? So there's really three different levels going on and it's a very sort of subtle and complicated way to look at film. But one thing that I've noticed over the years in using bits of films in my classes in Greek mythology and other classes is that students are very sophisticated readers, if you can use that word, of film, you know, they've grown up with screens in front of them, TV screens, computer screens, video monitors, and films, you know, at the multiplex. And they read film or moving image the way some of us, back in the old days, were taught to read literature. You know, it's a very radical statement, especially for our classes, to come out and say, you know what, this is the literature of our time.

And if it's seeing something about the classical world, the ancient world, then it's a relevant and important thing for us to study, because if we're trying to find out, if we as classes are trying to make our discipline relevant, if we're trying to say, hey, what's interesting about the Greeks and Romans, a bunch of dead white guys, they don't get any dead or white or right, how can we make it relevant today, and one of those media that I've, you know, just started to teach myself how to teach is through the use of film and what, you know, brilliant filmmakers, you know, William Wilder, Federico Fellini, Mel Brooks, brilliant and funny, the Monty Python guys, you know, how they've used ancient Rome, how they understood ancient Rome, or the ancient world, and how they put it on screen. So it's been really successful, the students, you know, I was thinking, you know, I'd get like 30 students or something, I had to close the class after 120 people signed up and I figured, you know, the discussions are not going to be very intimate, you know, about this, but we'll see how it goes, you know, it's the first time and, you know, I told the students that they're pioneers and we'll see how it goes, I'm really excited about it

though, it's been great fun for me to learn something totally new. So Monica, you also, you work with another professor and I understand that you do some interesting things to get your students attention. Tell us about that. Oh, I'd be happy to. They're a professor in the history department, Rick Berthold, a friend and colleague of mine. We have sort of perfected sort of, he said, she said, team teaching technique and we use it in the springtime when we team teach a course and the students, by the way, absolutely adore having two voices, even though we agree on most things, sometimes we pretend to disagree just to make it more interesting and theatrical. And we try to come up with different ways to kind of bounce off each other and have fun with the class and work off each other's strengths. Professor Berthold is also a very sort of exciting lecturer and uses a lot of humor. For example, this year, right now we are doing a course on Roman civilization, you know,

from the republic into the empire. And then there's a sort of critical moment that's happening in our class now in this next week or so where the Roman republic, you know, turns into the Roman Empire. And of course, that's a pivotal moment where a lot of the characters that are familiar to students from Roman, you know, epic movies from the 50s and 60s and so on, you know, are, it's people with those very familiar characters, Antony, Augustus, Cleopatra, of course, and, um, and Julius Caesar, the big guy, JC, right? So we are planning, actually, we're on the eve of this great debut where we're going to come to class tomorrow, uh, dressed in our, uh, our costumes as Caesar and Cleopatra. So he, it's sort of a surprise, I hope I don't ruin it too much, but, uh, he is going to start off and, and in his, uh, Toga and talking about, you know, the great wonderful things that he did to, uh, to, uh, to the Roman Republic at the, at the, in the, in the 50s and 40s in BC and I think I'm planning on making a rather grand entrance as the Queen of the Nile

and, uh, tell him that the Romans have it all wrong and, in fact, I need to control my own history, um, and, and speak to the class as Cleopatra. Roman, please. Thank you, fanfare. Hold this. Roman, Roman, Roman, all I hear about is Roman. These Romans have controlled the record for ages, for two millennia now, and I, Queen of the Nile, am here today to set the record straight, or at least as straight as I can with these Romans, as you know, how things go. Perhaps you know who I am. Well, we can fly the bike fields in Egypt readily enough. Perhaps you know who I am. I am Cleopatra, the seventh, Faea, Psylopatair, Queen of Upper and Lower Egypt, and all the Egypt in between. However, I am also, I was also and continued to be and should be in your imaginations

at successful ruler in efficient monarch, uh, a woman who brought peace to her country and prosperity as well. When I took over my country as a mere last of 18 years old from my father, Ptolemy Al-Latez, who squandered away our patrimony after 300 years of rule by the Ptolemy's, our Greek dynasty, I inherited a kingdom which was full of internal unrest. We were on unpopular dynasty, a foreign dynasty, a Greek dynasty amongst the Egyptian people. We were also a broke dynasty, things that become very expensive in the Mediterranean world in order to appease the Romans, we had to buy our alliances. And in fact- Not to mention all the handbags and shoes. You're right, these are nice. Got them on the Vespada. How do you like them? No, anyway. That's true. Leather is something we do like from the Romans, anyway. I inherited a kingdom in which we needed to make alliances with the Romans. We were under threat of being annexed to the Roman Empire, which was growing like

a cancer through the Mediterranean. And so I, like my father, decided to make an alliance with the Romans. When you want to be a friend with the Roman, what do you do? You buy it. A little nicky, nicky, nicky is a good thing, too, on the way. And that's how we cemented our alliance. So what I did, first of all, was as a very cany queen, was to decide who would end up on the winning side of these constant civil wars these Romans had. Civil wars, civil wars, pompy crafts, and Octavian Anthony. I had to decide who was going to win. And luckily, as a brilliant scholar and queen, I could figure that out for the most part well until I died, but we'll get to that later. Up until about 31 BC, I was pretty smart about it. So my first alliance that I made was with, of course, the insurgent Julius Caesar. Julie Baby showed up on the shores of Alexandria after his civil wars with pompy, looking for

some money to pay for all his expensive civil wars. Let's agree on one thing. What is Rome wants from Egypt? What is Rome always wanted from Egypt? Money and grain, okay? We have lots of it. I had lots of it because I was a very smart ruler and I encouraged prosperity amongst my people. So I made an alliance with Julius Caesar here. And yes, we did become lovers. Caesar, as you know, is a wife for every man and a husband for every woman. Do you find that students are more receptive to learning when things are presented to them in unusual ways? You know, it's funny because again, you know, this was partly my bias that I thought, oh, they're going to think it's silly or this is kind of high school or whatever. And it really is, you know, it just can never surprise me enough, you know, the attitude,

the positive attitude that you get from students when you just push the envelope a little bit. And I, for one, am willing to just push it almost too far if I'm going to get that response. If I'm going to get student interest and, you know, different kinds of learning are going to go on in the classroom, I'll do almost anything. I mean, I shouldn't say that, but, you know, costumes, boy, that's, that's nothing. That's fun for me. You know, so the students, their response has been really spectacular. I've been, you know, I just, you know, never ceases to amaze me how students will react positively. You know, the things you might have thought were, you know, a little beneath the dignity of college students. You know, they're just dying for it. You know, they're, they're, they're, once student once told me, this is the only class, you know, that I didn't fall asleep in. You know, I mean, in a way that's kind of sad, but it's the highest, you know, kind of praise to me that, you know, students, you know, if they're listening to the very end of 75 minutes, and it keeps

75 minutes going. I mean, you could be the most, you know, entertaining, beautiful person on earth, and 75 minutes is a hard chunk of time. And if you get to the end of a lecture, and this happens to me, you know, maybe once or twice a semester, you know, they're, they're interested, but to me, the, the greatest moment is if at 75 minutes you say, okay, I'm done, they all go, you know, as if they didn't even know that it was the end of class. And that actually happened to me last week, and it was, you know, one of the, you know, best days, you know, of my career. Were you in costume? No, I wasn't. I wasn't in costume. It was, it was just a lecture. I think that was sort of interesting because of the topics that we were discussing. It was a little, a little sexy, and talking about some sort of raunchy aspects of some room and literature. And students just had no clue. They were like, you know, what? People thought about this stuff, you know, 2,000 years ago. Well, you know, of course they did, you know, we're all here, right? You know, they, they didn't think about it. And in, in, in pretty, in pretty interesting ways. Monica, what do you have coming

up this year? Well, we have some exciting things coming up in our little corner of the classical world. My colleague, Professor Berthold, the historian that I mentioned, and I, we have now for, this will be our third summer. We've organized a trip for students to go to Greece. So it's an actual class. Students can get course credit for it. And we focus on a different topic, you know, in each course every year that we've done it now. And this summer, we're focusing on how religion and mythology impacted ancient Greek culture. And we do the seminar as we travel through Greece. So it's actually, you know, an actual tour of the ancient site. And it's been very successful the last couple of years. We usually have about 20, 25 students with us. And we do a lot of traveling and visiting of the actual ancient sites, which is, of course, very exciting for us as teachers and for the students, you know, even, even more so, especially if it's their first time there, which is

the case for most of them. So that's something that's in the, in the works right now. How long is that? The trip is, it's about a little over two weeks, which I think is just about enough time. Several students go a little early or stay a little late. We try to do it before summer school, not only as a, as a, as a, an advantage for students who want to go to summer school, but also that's really the best time to be in Greece before all the tourists descend, you know, from Northern Europe into, into the, into the Greek islands and so forth during high summer. So it's a really good time to go in, in late May early June. So that's something that's coming up and is really exciting for both of us. It's really fun to do with a colleague too, you know, to have the historians aspect and my, my take on it, focusing on the literature. So that's something that's, that's coming up right now. Wow, it sounds exciting. It's very exciting. Monica, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Valerie. This is a lot of fun. Good luck. Thank you. I'll meet it.