Professor Teresa Hubel has a special talent for inspiring her students to study English literature. For Hubel, literature is a dance, and she brings that dance to life for her students of postcolonial literature through her research into the literature and history of India.
Hubel first fell in love with Indian culture when she lived in India for a year on a Commonwealth scholarship in 1985-86. She learned Bharatanatyam, a classical dance of India, and became aware of a group of women, Devadasis, who were "servants of God - temple servants who were attached to huge temples in southern India and married to the Gods of the Temple."
Through her research, she has enriched Huron students with the writings of these women, as well as writing about these controversial dancers whose profession and cultural tradition was especially vibrant from the 16th to 19th centuries. "We look at the literature and fiction that surrounds them. They are a fascinating group of women," she says.
Hubel's teaching is just one example of the unique education that undergraduates receive at Huron. "I don't think there's a better undergraduate education anywhere," she says proudly. "I'm astonished by its results. Our fourth-year students are so advanced in both their thinking and writing skills. They go on to post-graduate work, teaching, publishing, a variety of things."
Hubel has started a new branch of research on Bollywood film and is currently writing her second essay on the subject.
"It's delightful to watch students try to come to some wider conception of these times," she says. "There's a good deal of one-on-one attention for students at Huron and that makes for great discussion in classes.
