�ֲ��ý faculty member to appear on Jeopardy!

Emily McConville — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 19:31:11 +0000

This member of the �ֲ��ý history faculty combined luck and brains to appear on the iconic quiz show Jeopardy!

Who is: Ian Shin?

The �ֲ��ý lecturer in history can’t yet tell us much about his appearance, which airs December 12, because of ��Ǳ貹��!’s nondisclosure rules. But he can tell us that Jeopardy!, the three-contestant buzzer game where questions become answers, hosted by Alex Trebek, has been part of his life for years.

Lecturer in History Ian Shin talks about his upcoming courses during Convocation, the week after he went on Jeopardy! (Jay Burns/�ֲ��ý College)

He watched buzzers, bets, and daily doubles with his grandmother after his family moved to California from Hong Kong. He learned some American cultural factoids that way. “And then obviously,” he adds, “for a certain set of really nerdy people, Jeopardy! is like nerd Olympics. There is a certain kind of prestige to being smart enough to be on Jeopardy!”

So when a few acquaintances competed on the show, Shin decided to go for it. Acing an online test last year got him an audition in New York, which involved another written test and a practice game.

A couple months later, he got a call from Burbank, Calif. A producer told him to show up for a taping — luckily, during the one week he wasn’t teaching or researching. Since several episodes are taped each day, Shin was told to bring extra sets of clothes, in case he won.

At the end of August, Shin flew out West. He hadn’t had time to study intensively, so he spent two days “just sort of cramming” — reading Wikipedia articles, relearning the periodic table, and studying up on sports history (the Pittsburgh Steelers, he can now tell you, have won the most Super Bowls). He also went through a database of every single Jeopardy! question ever written and every single incorrect answer.

The morning after Shin arrived, a van took him and the other contestants to the studio.

He says the atmosphere was friendly, but “the previous day’s champion was riding with us, so we were all like, ‘Oh, he is the real deal.’”

Ian Shin poses with Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek. Trebek, he said, “was very nice and was very charming with the audience.” (Photo courtesy of Ian Shin)

After a legal briefing and a rehearsal round, it was time to go. Turns out there’s a lot more that goes into the “nerd Olympics” than knowing a lot of stuff.

Multitasking, he says, is key: If you buzz in before Trebek finishes reading the question, you’re subject to a short delay, an eternity in the world of fast-paced, quiz-bowl-style games. Jeopardy! players have to juggle hearing the question, figuring out the answer, and hitting the buzzer at just the right moment.

There’s also a surprising amount of endurance involved. “You are standing up there for a half an hour, the lights are bearing down on you, you have to have a trigger finger,” Shin says. “There is a physical aspect of it that I didn’t expect.”

So Shin devised a system. “When Alex starts reading the clue, I am going to read the end of the clue to see what the last word is. So I keep that in my mind, and when I hear him say the last word, I will know when to buzz.”

Until his episode airs, we won’t know how that worked for him. But he says he made sure to name-drop �ֲ��ý during the round. And whether Shin was a one-and-done contestant or became a returning winner, he is grateful for his firsthand look at an invaluable part of American pop culture that’s been on TV nearly continuously since 1964.

“In an era of fake news and alternative facts, Jeopardy! celebrates being informed and celebrates knowledge,” he says. “It says, ‘You know something; come on the show,’ and rewards that. That’s something that I really appreciate.”

With new urgency, �ֲ��ý professors say what — and why — they’re excited to teach this fall

Jay Burns — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 15:59:26 +0000

Each year when I ask faculty what they’re excited to teach, there’s a shared vibe — optimism for a new academic year and new students — in their different answers. But this year, I heard something new: urgency.

Associate Professor of History Joe Hall, for example, feels the force of current events as he launches his course on .

Hall says that following “horrible misreadings” of U.S. history by President Trump and following the violence in Charlottesville, his course “offers a wonderful opportunity” to set the record straight.

Current events, he says, offer the chance to talk “not just about understanding why history matters, which is frankly true of any history course, but to talk about the origins of slavery, which are at the center of this country, and later the founding of the Confederacy and race relations that still make our lives so complicated.”

Ian Shin, a lecturer in history and C3 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, is bringing a new course to the college, .

As noted in the Catalog, the course will suggest that the “contemporary discourse of Asian Americans as the ‘model minority’ obscures a long history of struggles for equality and glosses over the community’s rich diversity.”

Ian Shin, a lecturer in history and C3 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, brings a new course to the college, “Making Asian America: Citizenship, Identity, Belonging.” (Jay Burns/�ֲ��ý College)

“To my understanding, this is the first time this topic has been taught at �ֲ��ý,” Shin says. “So there are a lot of stories that haven’t been told and a hunger among students of Asian descent to hear these stories.”

Moreover, he says, the course “offers a new way to think about U.S. history” by setting aside the usual narratives of American history, ones that often focus on transatlantic immigrants, to take a new perspective, looking at those who came “over the Pacific from Asia and Southeast Asia” to America.

Jane Costlow, the Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies, says she’s been “inspired by where we are right now” to shake up her environmental humanities course, ““

So while students will still read canonical writers like Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Edward Abbey, she’s been introducing new and more diverse voices, such as those in “” essays edited by cultural geographer and writer Carolyn Finney and published in Orion magazine in 2016.

Costlow says that her love of writers like Thoreau, Muir, and Abbey includes “fighting with them sometimes”; for example, dealing with Abbey’s misogyny. But then “there are his moments of insight into the world, where his orneriness is directed against things that drive me nuts, too, such as materialism and superficiality.”

“I tell students that I hope they will discover writers who resonate with them who are, at some level very different from they are.”

Assistant Professor of Sociology Michael Rocque is keen to teach his own new course, “.”

Rocque says his course will go beyond the criminal justice system to look at the “philosophy and social reasons of why we need to control and sometimes correct behavior.”

A criminologist, Rocque has correctional-system experience, including a stint as director of research for the Maine Department of Corrections. “I plan to use some of my connections, on both the inmate and staff sides, to show students an inside perspective on that whole world.”

Professor of Sociology Francesco Duina is the author of the forthcoming book, Broke and Patriotic: Why Poor Americans Love Their Country. (H. Jay Burns/�ֲ��ý College)

Rocque’s colleague Professor of Sociology Francesco Duina, author of the forthcoming book (Stanford University Press), says it’s a great time to teach his course on . “Very timely,” he says. “Given the current political climate, I think students will feel interested in topics such as national identity and populism.”

Rebecca Corrie, the Phillips Professor of Art and Visual Culture, is excited to teach her long-running First-Year Seminar “.”

The course looks beyond the familiar public face of museums to the complex world of collecting: “the art market, art law, and their sinister underside, art crime.”

Rebecca Corrie, the Phillips Professor of Art and Visual Culture, teaches the First-Year Seminar “Fakers, Forgers, Looters, Thieves.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

It’s a “topic that keeps on giving,” she says, referencing two recent news stories, one about the on the suspicion that it was looted from Italy in the 1970s and the other about an of 13 priceless pieces from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Like all �ֲ��ý geologists, Professor of Geology Mike Retelle is happiest when he’s out in the field, which is why he’s jazzed to teach his course on .

“It’s an intensive field laboratory course that gets students working like geologists,” he says. The class will visit what Retelle calls his “classic sites in Maine,” on the coast, rivers, and lakes. “They get a chance to get their hands dirty, literally.”

Assistant Professor of Physics Aleks Diamond-Stanic looks forward to his newly created First-Year Seminar on .

“We’re doing readings on stereotype threat, on , and how to be successful in sciences, and we’ll have discussions to help students contextualize various current events.”

Marcus Bruce ’77, the Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies, took a broader perspective than his colleagues.

He’s teaching courses on from 1550 to 1840 and , plus a for majors in religious studies.

Professor Emeritus of Sociology Sawyer Sylvester talks with Professor of Religious Studies Marcus Bruce ’77 after Convocation on Sept. 5, 2017. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

For Bruce, excitement comes from “teaching a new group of students. It’s always interesting to see what they bring to the classroom.”

As he engages his students in dialogue, “something happens in that moment when you exchange ideas,” Bruce says. “You tell them a little bit about America’s religious history, and they bring their insights and perspectives. And that keeps it fresh.”

Ian Shin – News

�ֲ���ý faculty member to appear on Jeopardy!

With new urgency, �ֲ���ý professors say what — and why — they’re excited to teach this fall

�ֲ��ý faculty member to appear on Jeopardy!

With new urgency, �ֲ��ý professors say what — and why — they’re excited to teach this fall