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Dr. Kate Franzén
When Kate Franzén went to The College of William and Mary in 1983 as a University of St. Andrews exchange scholar from England, she did not expect to live long-term in the United States, or even to stay beyond her one-year exchange. But love changes everything. Franzén met her future husband while at William and Mary, and although he offered to live in the UK, he had already started his professional career and it was logical for her to stay stateside.
Twenty-five years later — as an assistant professor at Mary Baldwin — Franzén will lead an important discussion on campus this month [November 2008] about the political and personal decisions one makes when immigrating to the U.S. Students Yenny Caceres ’10 and Pamela Mendoza ’09 will join her in the session, which is part of the Spencer Center’s International Café: Mapping Issues Around the Globe series.
Franzén considers herself a “fortunate immigrant,” whose main obstacles were language — “English is not the same in every country, despite what you might think,” she says — and applying for graduate school in the U.S. with British qualifications. She believes MBC’s global initiatives are not only exciting, but critical. “We can fly to distant locations with relative ease, yet appreciating the differences in the everyday lives of other people, whether in Staunton or halfway around the world, is much more challenging,” she said.
Here Franzén reveals more about her roots and connection with MBC, where she has taught for 17 years.
What I do: I read; tell stories and narratives; relate new and difficult concepts to more accessible analogies; grade papers and tests; and remind, seemingly, everyone that the third person singular possessive is not spelled “it’s” but, rather, “its.” Specifically, I teach Western Civilization, which is sometimes called “From Plato to NATO,” but I like to think of it also as “From Cavewomen to Margaret Thatcher.” It spans a huge time period. I also teach British history from 1688 (my special interest is 19th-century British history) and Russian history. I enjoy the variety of also teaching several history courses in the Adult Degree Program as independent studies and one course in the Master of Arts in Teaching summer program. I don’t usually instruct anywhere else, but last semester I taught British history at University of Virginia.
Who’d play you in a movie? Helena Bonham-Carter. We are both petite and have dark hair. That’s probably where the similarities end, though! Her family actually has a weekend home in my parents’ village, so she would know a lot of the places where I go when I visit my family, and I think she could understand the pitfalls and advantages of village life.
What is in your home CD/tape player? Vivaldi’s Four Seasons
People would be surprised to know: I didn’t learn to drive a car until after I came to live in the United States … when I was 24.
What is your favorite word? Soporific, as it appears in Beatrix Potter’s Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies. Generally speaking, it means “causing or tending to cause sleep.”
What is your least favorite word? My least favorite word is unprintable. Not the word “unprintable.” It’s just not a printable word!
What sound or noise do you love? The laughter of my children, Eleanor, 16, and Nicholas, 10. Eleanor spent the first two years of her life coming to work with me, where she had the most wonderful MBC students as her babysitters. Nicholas knows all the good places in Staunton to get an ice cream, and he has directed his student sitters on how to catch the trolley to Gypsy Hill Park, where he likes to feed the ducks and fish.
What sound or noise do you hate? It’s a typical teacher answer, I’m sure, but it is squeaky chalk on a blackboard.
What profession, other than yours, would you like to participate in? I have always thought that I would be a good tour guide. I like showing people around places of interest. I often showed college friends round my home town of York, in the north of England. After moving to the U.S., I have usually tried to take family and friends to places of interest that I like, such as the Blue Ridge Mountains, Monticello, Montpelier, Williamsburg, and, of course, our very own Blackfriars Playhouse and American Frontier Culture Museum.
What is your favorite MBC tradition and why? Apple Day. Although it is celebrated differently now than when it started, I like the idea of its origins.
This interview originally appeared in the November 4, 2008 issue of The Cupola. Several of the above questions are courtesy of the questionnaire invented by Bernard Pivot, used frequently on Bravo’s Inside the Actors Studio.