Laurel is an exceptional mentor, who actively teaches by doing, and who models both how to teach and how to learn. She also shows us how to combine that scholarly labor with other joys and duties, from teaching to family life. She possesses, too, a radical generosity of time and talents; she truly is not afraid of hard work. Endlessly curious and capacious in her interests, Laurel travels with her students wherever we wish to go, always warmly encouraging. She also lets us fly and occasionally falter, from which we learn a great deal. How we have leaned on her strength, from our fledgling flights to our settled middle age. She has been an extraordinary advisor and co-conspirator over decades.
On the occasion of LaurelX, some of her many grateful former students reflected on the precious time they spent learning from her as a scholar, mentor, and friend. These reflections had to be brief, given the schedule at LaurelX, but they offer heartfelt testimony to the many ways that Laurel changed her graduate students’ lives.
1. Mentoring the Early Stages
Laurel has been amazing with undergraduates. Margot Minardi, who was both her undergrad and grad student, won’t forget Laurel’s comments on the draft of her senior thesis. “It was the most extraordinarily detailed feedback I had received on any piece of work. … She offered rigorous critique and inspiration at the same time.”
She even corresponded with other undergraduates who contacted her, as Becky Goetz recalls. She emailed Laurel out of the blue for her undergrad thesis and received a warm, wonderful response. “It wasn't until Becky’s own book was out and she started getting emails from people she didn’t know that she “appreciated how generous Laurel had been to correspond …with a random undergraduate who was badgering her with questions about a guy who happened to have lived in the same town as Martha Ballard. That kind of generosity is really rare.”
John Bell agrees that Laurel’s “first instinct is to give—of her attention, her time, and herself. …. Laurel is renowned for the rigor of her research, but she deserves as much credit for the selflessness of her service, particularly to her graduate students. Whether we’ve needed a listening ear, a voice in the wilderness, a pat on the back, or a kick in the pants, Laurel has been there for us.”
Sarah Pearsall also emphasizes Laurel’s encouragement: “‘You’re not afraid of hard work!’ declared Laurel with dauntless cheer in my first year of graduate school, when I talked to her about undertaking an especially heavy load of classes. Actually, to be honest, I was a little afraid. In graduate school, I was a bit scared of just about everything—and everyone. They all seemed to have read more, thought more deeply and productively, and articulated their views with greater success than I was ever managing. Laurel certainly did. However, happily for me and all her students, Laurel finds the magic in the seemingly mundane as well as the terminal impostors.”
Reflecting on her time working with Laurel at UNH, Beth Nichols recalled a dinner that seemed to capture something essential. “We were invited for dinner… There was a large, inviting kitchen with a giant round dining table… It was wonderful as there was no “head” of the table, no seat better than any other…Very egalitarian, very inclusive.” Very Laurel.
2. Guiding Dissertations
Paul Mapp remembers being part of Laurel’s dissertation writing group: “where everybody was welcome, everybody was helped, and [Laurel] was courageous enough to bring her own early stuff to set an example of being open to criticism. I always admired how open she was also to different approaches. My retro diplomatic history was about as far from Midwife's Tale as you can get, but boy did she help me out…. What strikes me again is how well she could get a group of graduate students with widely varied interests working together. It's hard to overstate how effective her leadership was.”
Lin Fisher particularly valued some of Laurel’s famous re-directions. ““I’m not so sure about that!” Usually offered with a twinkle and a smile, Laurel could offer the kindest redirection I’ve ever experienced. A crazy idea proffered could, in her hands, gently be remoulded into a productive direction in a way that made you feel like it was sort of your idea. “Well, we’ll see!” In Laurel-speak, this usually meant that an idea was likely going to fail, but she was willing to let us try it anyway. Permission to fail is an incredible pedagogical gift, as I have only realized in retrospect.”
Gloria Whiting recalls the faith that Laurel had as a mentor: “When a prominent early Americanist doubted publicly … that I would be able to complete the dissertation …, Laurel displayed not even a hint of concern. “That’s what everyone told me, too—the sources don’t exist. Well, just write the dissertation, and you’ll show everyone that they do!” Gloria also “learned from Laurel to love research that yielded just a shard here and a fragment there; she taught me to value hard work in stubborn and unyielding archives. In this well of inspiration I imbibed deeply, perhaps too deeply. At a certain point, Laurel told me on no uncertain terms that she thought I should stay out of the archives: “Historians must also write.”
Kate Grandjean has held onto Laurel’s writing advice, for example about the pain of beginnings: Laurel would say: “‘I know I’m always in for three or four days of misery, whenever I start writing something.’ That is, the entry is rough….[also]… Kate also recalls Laurel telling her: ‘You know, argument isn’t everything.’ By which she thinks Laurel meant that “sometimes a story cannot be captured, neatly and tightly, in a simple thesis. Historical writing has a lot of dimensions. All of its worth doesn’t have to come from the argument. That was freeing.”
Brian DeLay remembers the first time he heard Laurel’s injunction to “make your problem your solution,” a few months after he arrived at Harvard. “I can still picture her leaning back, closing her mouth, and smiling as she watched me process that. At first, I heard her saying that the obstacle I’d run into with my writing had a door somewhere. That with persistence I’d find my way through it.” Over time, though, he came to hear her saying something more important and challenging; “that the obstacle was an opportunity; that with creativity and work I could turn my particular problem into an asset. That helped. A lot.” But, as with so many things Laurel said, Brian kept thinking about that magic injunction long after graduate school. He eventually came to hear something even deeper and more profound, about instinct. “Now when I heard Laurel’s voice telling me to make my problem my solution, I hear her saying that a problem can be precious. That rather than ignore it or plough through it, I ought to listen to my own internal voice whenever it begins to perceive a problem. That problems become solutions that I wasn’t smart enough to know I needed when I started writing.”
Margot Minardi recalls another “Laurelism”: "The best advice I ever got on both giving and receiving criticism came from Laurel, which went something like this: 'Readers are good at pointing out problems but not always so good at offering solutions.' She encouraged each of us to maintain our own voice and vision in the face of critics who wanted us to write our books in the way they would have written them. But what has struck me over the years is that this advice applies to a lot more than scholarship. She was really saying that you can (and should) be humble and open to the perspectives of other people, while having a clear sense of your own values and ideals at the same time. This has helped me through some personal and professional challenges that had little to do with the writing of history."
3. Teaching Teaching
Among other things, Rick Bell remains in awe of Laurel as a lecturer. “She teaches a lot of large lecture classes, a format in which she can cast quite a spell! When I lecture now, I tend to bellow and swear, two crutches I use to force my students to attention. Laurel does the opposite. Speaking with measured calm, she sets up one small mystery after another for her students to pull at and puzzle over.”
Rick also recalled the incredible work Laurel put into planning a new class: “What I remember most clearly from that experience was the massive amount of work that [she] put in to get her legendary [Pursuits of Happiness] course up and running. ….Laurel taught me that teaching is work; that no great teacher is ever winging it; that great teachers plan, re-plan, try, and retry. Laurel taught so many of us to know great teaching when we see it, and to recognize just how hard we all need to try to ever keep up with her.”
Margot Minardi agrees. “I recall Laurel as a really phenomenal lecturer, in both of the undergraduate classes that I took with her … and in the class I TF'd for her …. What particularly stands out to me about her lectures are two things. First, she would often return to a particular image as a way of reminding students of a key idea or offering a new perspective on something they thought they already understood. She is one of the most effective Powerpoint users I have ever seen! Second, she had a knack for structuring the lecture around a very clearly articulated question or problem. As a result, I can STILL remember a number of her lectures from Women's Studies 10a, which I believe I took in the fall of 1997. I am doubtful that any of my students remember the lecture I gave a month ago; however, I do try to emulate Laurel's technique.”
Michelle Morris recalls how much she learned working as a research assistant for Laurel: “It was in those discussions that I really learned the how-to’s of two of Laurel’s mottos that still stand me in good stead. I learned to “get all of the butter from my duck” as she showed me how I had often found more than I realized. She encouraged me to “make my problem my solution,” to turn questions around so that the lack of evidence showed me something I had not seen before. This was training I don’t think I could have gotten in any other way, and it was the most valuable training I got in a decade of graduate school. (Thank you, Laurel.)”
4. Generosity and Wisdom outside the Academy
Of course, Laurel taught all of us beyond the classroom. Lin Fisher shared a story, a version of which many of us experienced. ““Congratulations! This is for you and Jo.” I opened the package, and out jumped a baby-sized quilt, with the letters of our daughter’s name stitched into the four corners. I offered a bleary-eyed “thank you,” but inside I was thinking: “She made this??” This eminent scholar… took time to mark the birth of our third child with a baby quilt. A material, physical object, for a baby girl, one that could be immediately used as well as handed down for generations. Of course she did. Because she’s Laurel. This generosity of spirit and focus on material culture in mentoring and teaching has stuck with me as I, too, try to give each of my graduate students something tangible, something on which they can anchor one small slice of their experience.”
Kirsten Sword recalls the wise advice that Laurel gave her about life as well as work. “I recall Laurel saying on more than one occasion that “life is long,” as I struggled to balance the demands of young children, aging parents and dual careers. It fits with one of the first historical lessons she taught me when I worked as a research assistant …which was that colonial women kept journals before and after they had children in the house, but almost never while they were mothering because it was simply too hard… I’m now gaining a better sense of what Laurel meant … I’m taking her extraordinarily generous and generative post-child career as an inspiration to reimagine my own life’s next chapter.”
John Bell shared a different sort of insight gleaned from Laurel. “Duties can become joys when we treat them as chances to learn and grow. As everyone knows, Laurel excels at finding the wondrous where it has gone unnoticed. This gift extends beyond her sources to her students. She has brought the same curiosity and care to our work as she has to hers. Often before we saw it in ourselves, Laurel recognized our potential and continued to believe in us when we doubted. We may never hope to repay her for generosity, but we can try to pay it forward.”
Beth Nichols expresses something that applies to all of us, Laurel’s grateful students. “The world is a better place for Laurel’s engagement in it. The academy is a better place; there have been real changes in her tenure. Some small, some quite major. Look around. Imagine what this gathering probably looked like 30 years, ago, even 20, even just 10 years ago. American history, women’s history, and every single one of us have benefited profoundly.”
With gratitude, admiration, and love,
John Bell
Rick Bell
Brian DeLay
Lin Fisher
Becky Goetz
Paul Mapp
Margot Minardi
Michelle Morris
Beth Nichols
Sarah Pearsall
Kirsten Sword
Gloria Whiting