In future history books about Macalester, Professors Norm and Emily Rosenberg will have a prominent place. Now in their 31st year at the college, the two historians are synonymous with 'inspiring teachers' and 'pioneering scholars.'
by Elizabeth Tannen '05

January 2006: The Rosenbergs in Old Main, the home of the History Department during most of their time at Macalester. PETER BARTZ-GALLAGHER '05

Norm and Emily Rosenberg do not make a habit of talking to the media. As predicted, they have responded to my request for an interview with cool trepidation. I anxiously pace the length of my house, nerves jabbing at my insides like so many pick-up sticks, and await the time we have set to further "discuss the matter" by phone. Armed with a cache of spiels designed to reel them in, I dial their number. Norm answers.

"Hi, Lizzie."

"Hi! So, I was thinking--"

"Why don't you e-mail us and we'll talk this weekend," he says. "But right now you should turn on Channel 2--there's a documentary of They Marched into Sunlight [a book we read in class]."

Norm and Emily would much rather assign homework than talk about themselves. Later that evening I relay the anecdote to a group of alums and fellow Rosenberg admirers gathered at a neighborhood bar, all of whom respond with knowing grins and suggested lines of questioning.

It's a familiar scene. As much as Emily and Norm are objects of admiration in the Mac community, they are also the subjects of some fascination. The students who take their classes are inevitably charmed not only by their warmth, humor and tactile passion for American history--as they make plans for life after Macalester, both of their CVs brim with recognition of their teaching and research prowess--but by the seeming incongruity of their pairing. It's grown tired to remark their differences as professors, but one former student best captured the contrast when he suggested that their team-taught class might consist of Norm playing video footage of Emily's talking torso--spliced together with those of Jon Stewart and Lisa Simpson, of course.

Her endearingly effervescent demeanor notwithstanding, Emily is surely the serious one: teaching reliably at 8:30 in the morning, specializing in the serious stuff of public policy. Norm is notoriously more laid-back, his cultural studies classes built around image schemes that form a synaptic universe only he could choreograph.

Still, it's not all that surprising when Norm and Emily, who have shared a position since 1975 and are now honored as DeWitt Wallace Professors of History, insist on perceiving themselves as complementary rather than opposite quantities. Both, after all, teach 20th century American history. They co-write all the time (one college textbook, In Our Times: America Since World War II, has gone through seven editions since 1976, and their co-authored history survey text, Liberty, Equality, Power, is widely used around the country). It may be 10 years or so since the last time they team-taught, but as far as they are concerned their work proceeds in constant tandem. It is telling that the one accomplishment they openly brag about is how long they've negotiated sharing one academic position: with disarming assuredness, they tell me it's a world record.

I have often been aware of a certain reticence from Emily and Norm, a vague sense of privacy. I realize now that what I had perceived was their extraordinary modesty along with their sense of purpose. Their love for teaching is coupled with a devotion to their work that precludes endeavors of less importance to them--hence their disinclination to speak with media. Punditry simply lies outside of their interests. Anyways, they'd rather be teaching.

Why did the two of you want just one job?

Emily: It was the early days of the women's movement and we both felt that flexible jobs and careers were important for both women and men. Nothing would really change in the direction of equality unless men also had the opportunity to have more flexible work and family life.

Norm: It's unheard of now. Most couples want "two jobs."

Emily: When we were in graduate school, we'd never even heard of such a thing as sharing a job. But we thought it would be a way to balance careers and families and jobs.

How did you share one job at first?

Norm: We've done it every possible way. We've taught together; we've had one of us teaching entirely one semester--

Emily: And one the next. What was nice about it was that you could rearrange it in different configurations, depending on the need.

Norm: Now that our four kids are gone, it makes sense for both of us to teach for one semester so we can't work more than half-time. And people think we're getting such a good deal! But many people could have half-time work--you just have to work for half the salary.

Do you remember your first impressions of Macalester?

Emily: We knew it was a school that got a lot of talented students. So we were thrilled--we liked the atmosphere and St. Paul. The students were lively and interesting and it was the early '70s, when there was a lot going on on campus. The counter-culture was at its very height at Macalester. It was the kind of atmosphere where students felt that learning should be relevant; they would challenge your syllabus if they didn't think it was relevant enough.

Norm: You had some ideas of your own, but basically the syllabus was a joint product of you and the students in those days.

Emily: There was a sense that learning should be collaborative, which students really tried to enforce within the classes, and of course we loved that because we felt there needed to be significant changes in education. We saw that students could be empowered by the power of their own choices, and we were delighted to be in a school that had the respect for students that it did not feel the need for a heavy regimen of requirements. I remember the first few years, if it was a small class, the first item on the agenda was, where should we meet? Because nobody thought you had to be in a classroom if you were really going to learn.

Norm: I won't mention the places my classes used to meet. But everything was less structured then.

Emily: We sometimes even met in students' apartments. Students would bake things. That all now sounds sort of flaky, like it was part of an anti-intellectual, let's-do-anything atmosphere, but it wasn't. At the time, it offered a very engaged way of learning.

Norm: That passed relatively quickly, though. You don't want to get nostalgic about it, but that's been the biggest change, I think, in the whole time we've been here--the greater pressure for structure. Of course now you come in with a syllabus and course goals.

How has the way that you teach changed over the years?

Norm: For me--and I think for you, too--it's the electronic nature of teaching. Amazingly, I probably didn't teach with video until the mid-'80s. Probably three-quarters of papers were handwritten in the old days. We couldn't teach now without the Internet. I even use it for submitting papers.

Emily: Ironically, another way that teaching has changed, which goes against the sort of thing we were just talking about, is that we actually did a lot more lecturing then in our regular-sized classes. It's what almost everyone did. The whole notion of the professor as the authoritative lecturer has been challenged, however. So our teaching has changed radically over the years. I went from pretty much giving lectures in larger classes, then at some point in the middle-'90s I'd gone to mostly discussion--no matter the size of the class--until I began to get comments from students that they wouldn't mind hearing from me now and then! Now I've kind of gone back again.

Norm: The funniest thing we ever tried was when a colleague of mine and I had this brilliant idea that college students learn best in the middle of the night. So we actually had a full class--25 people informally signed up--and we were going to hold a class from one in the morning till three! But the college wouldn't schedule it. That was the ultimate in flexibility.

How do you think of your teaching styles in relation to one another?

Norm: I think they're complementary. We do basically the same thing in different ways.

Emily: I don't know what students perceive, but we certainly perceive ourselves as having had a lifelong dialogue not just about history and all kinds of substantive and interpretive issues but also about teaching.

Norm: And what the best way to teach a specific thing is. That's the great advantage, that we teach the same thing.

Emily: Well, we do different things--

Norm: But we understand what the other is trying to do.

Emily: Exactly. We understand each other's strengths and weaknesses so we can have a dialogue about that.

Norm: We both don't stress content so much--specific content is a function of other things. Early on we stressed getting the "correct" perspective; we obviously don't anymore. For both of us, teaching is getting students to see how many perspectives there can be on any one issue or theme and approaching them in all sorts of ways.

Emily: And getting students engaged from wherever they're coming in and whatever issue they want to engage with. There are many different ways each of us could go about doing that, because Norm has different strengths and interests than I do, but the goals are pretty similar. One of Norm's strengths is cultural history, for example, and particularly dealing with images. It's not that I don't think it's valuable, it's just not what I can hold in my mind's eye. So if it involves cultural history, Norm is the person who can be very adept at talking about it. I've always been much more--

Norm: Public policy-oriented.

Emily: Yes. In some ways, I guess it's not as associative a medium as cultural studies, so our minds work a little bit differently. I think that's why in a lot of ways we complement each other really well--when we write, for example. Norm tends to be more associative and his style draws more toward cultural things; I'm probably more linear in my style and drawn more toward policy-type things.

Norm: I'm more serious than you are.

What has stayed the same about Macalester students?

Emily: Though the styles change, the engagement of students in their own learning remains the hallmark of Macalester.

Norm: The inventiveness of students, their engagement with a wide range of things. We're always asked how students have changed and the answer's always the same: much less so than the rest of the country. There's a very distinct culture here and it's hard to explain--we won't try. But more of it has remained than has seeped away. Particularly the enthusiasm.

Emily: It's a culture that really values learning and engagement with learning and intellectual inquiry, but it's not a culture that wants to demonstrate that; there's little competitiveness about grades. So it's intellectually ambitious, but not--

Norm: Uptight, or self-important.

Emily: That is an incredibly unique atmosphere. Usually if you go to this kind of rigorous intellectual place, you get a sense of competitiveness that is very stressful. I don't think that Macalester--

Norm: Well, it's stressful, but not destructively stressful.

Why do you think your classes are so popular?

Emily: You have to ask students!

1986: Emily and Norm have shared one position at Macalester since 1975. Since 1993 they have been honored as DeWitt Wallace Professors of History. JIM HANSEN

Norm: We work at it! We both like to teach. And for us it's fun. I think that carries over.

Emily: But as is the case with most faculty, we're also genuinely engaged with our subject matter and really interested in what we do.

Norm: Yeah, we change it all the time. It's fresh to us!

Emily: It's never the same class.

Norm: I try not to recycle class syllabi. Because the tendency then is to routinely recycle something that you've done before.

Emily: Well, I repeatsome stuff.

Norm: I'll play the same video, but it'll be for a different purpose and in a different context. You know, I'm surprised what I can come up with! But our teaching seeps into our textbooks, too. We once even had a feature on "The Simpsons."

What have you learned from teaching?

Emily: It's the same thing that we've learned from child-rearing, which is patience and tolerance of different views.

Norm: Understanding and empathy. Never over-estimate what you've done for people. In terms of history, it's always multi-causal--there's always another influence. The same thing is true for teaching: How do you measure your supposed influence on a student versus someone else's? Why would you want to? You hope to be one of the factors; you hope that what you introduce to people will be important and useful for them. But on the other hand, you're not looking to shape people like a potter.

Elizabeth Tannen '05 is a writer currently interning with National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" in Washington, D.C.