CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Harvard Gazette) — Five faculty members were awarded a Harvard College Professorship for excellence in undergraduate teaching, in fields ranging from high-dimensional geometry to comparative politics. Hopi Hoekstra, Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, announced the recipients on May 6. They are Christina Maranci, Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies, Denis Auroux, Herchel Smith Professor of Mathematics; Michael Smith, John H. Finley Jr. Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Karen Thornber, Harry Tuchman Levin Professor in Literature and Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and Yuhua Wang, Ford Foundation Professor of Modern China Studies.
Maranci, an art historian with a focus in pre-modern Armenia, likes to begin her classes with images — perhaps a 7th-century Armenian manuscript depicting the Annunciation, or photographs from fieldwork in Eastern Turkey — and let her students first experience the image, then learn to understand it.
“One of the wonderful things about working with art and visual culture is that you can really confront them with things before they know what they are, and they just look,” Maranci said. “Then you teach them to ask questions about what they’re looking at. For me, it’s a really helpful way of teaching and it also promotes curiosity.”
Maranci’s area of expertise falls at the intersection of art, architecture, and material culture of medieval Armenia. She teaches courses on all aspects of Armenian culture and history, from liturgical textiles to art and literature.
For Maranci, teaching is a “whole-body” experience. She doesn’t read from notes, choosing instead to walk around the room as she lectures, welcoming questions and drawing individual students into lively, public dialogue.
She vividly recalled her own undergraduate struggles — grappling with material that seemed easily understandable to her peers. That experience, she said, informs the way she teaches today.
