Taylor to give 'Lecture on Great Teaching'

by Kara Furlong

Mark C. Taylor, the Cluett Professor of Humanities and Religion at Williams College, will explore education's place in the emerging network culture Thursday, April 11.

Taylor's lecture will begin at 6 p.m. in the Flynn Auditorium at Vanderbilt Law School. A reception with Taylor will precede the lecture at 5 p.m. in the Flynn Auditorium lobby. The event is free and open to the public.

Taylor's appearance at Vanderbilt marks this year's Lecture on Great Teaching, presented by the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching in coordination with the Chancellor's Lecture Series.

Taylor has described his teaching approach as a method of helping his students continue an 'ongoing conversation' with great thinkers of the past.

"When I conceive a course, I don't think of it as a survey of certain philosophers, but as a series of problems I'm thinking about that I can use as a framework," he said. "Teaching to me is an ongoing conversation."

A self-described "philosopher of culture," Taylor's specialties include influential work on Hegel and Kierkegaard, on post-death-of-God theology, on architecture theory and postmodernism. What has earned Taylor notice in recent years, however, is his efforts to unite these great fields of study from the past with the emerging virtual culture of the future.

At Williams College, Taylor teaches a course called "Cyberscapes" that explores the philosophical and cultural implications of the information revolution.

In 1992 Taylor conducted a "global seminar" in which his students at Williams linked up with the University of Helsinki through teleconferences and e-mail. For a class on Las Vegas, he developed a video game on CD-ROM as a means for students to explore the city as a prism for understanding virtual culture.

In the late 1990s, Taylor co-founded the Global Education Network (GEN) with Wall Street mogul Herbert Allen Jr. GEN is a private, for-profit company that sells college courses that are taken over the Internet. The idea behind GEN calls for academics at the nation's vaulted institutions -- the so-called "brand name" schools -- to develop curriculum and teach courses that are broadcast over the Internet, making "brand name" education accessible to long-distance learners.

Taylor is the author of more than 15 books, including Imagologies, Hiding and The Moment of Complexity.