Meet New Faculty Member: Dr. Spencer Tricker
I was able to sit down with Dr. Spencer Tricker, one of three new hires that the English Department has welcomed this year. Hailing from Florida with an M.A. in Literary, Cultural, and Textual Studies, from the University of Central Florida and a Ph.D. in English, from the University of Miami, Dr. Tricker brings a focus in comparative ethnic American literature with emphases on Asian American and Pacific Islander writings of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. "I started out an English major in college and I was kind of and Anglophile, because I grew up in Hong Kong when it was a British colony--and my dad's British as is my grandfather and that whole side of my family. And then I moved to Florida, I felt very displaced there, you know, like I didn't belong. It was there that I built my interest in British culture because it felt like it was a special thing that I had in my past that was distinct from the world around me every day."
Considering this Anglophile focus, I wondered how he found his focus in ethnic American and Asian American Literature. "Well, as I got further into my studies, it turned out that it was going to be better for me to pursue something that was a little less close to my experience. And, really, in the simplest terms I just had a really good mentor who worked in American Lit, and I decided I wanted to work with them." Before joining us here at Loyola, Dr. Tricker was teaching at Clarke University in Massachusetts. As he looked toward his long-term academic home, Dr. Tricker was seeking "a student body that would be vibrant, that would be diverse, interesting, which is often a lot of people's goal." Knowing that this role would take him to a new city he was excited at the idea of settling down in Chicago, "I had never really been to Chicago before except on a short conference visit, so this is a pretty new place for me, and I really enjoy the campus here, I find it to be very inspiring. I think a lot of professors here do this, but as I settle in here, I would like to have my classes be in conversation with Chicago. When I was an undergrad at NYU and when I studied abroad in London, I could see the places that had inspired the literature that I was reading, you know, I could read a story about New York City and then just go out into the streets and see the environment and imagine yourself as part of this cultural history. I want my students to have that feeling in Chicago, perhaps creating a way to have a field trip integrated into assignments; I am really looking just to get everyone out there."
Being an academic and educator in a time when each new day brings a darker and scarier change can be challenging, but Dr. Tricker believes that "when it comes to classes I think meeting the moment is really important. Like this moment feels pretty anxiety ridden and dark, and it can feel like a time to shy away from the controversy, but I am trying to resist that. I want to go through the controversy and have students engage with difficult material at times. I'm definitely not someone who is just trying to just put students through the wringer of our culture for the sake of it, but we need to experience what's pleasurable about it, and what can be in conversation. I think it is a moment where things feel kind of distressing, but we can't become the ivory tower and escape or shelter ourselves in privilege."
Building conscience thinkers isn't only centered in text, expanding a class's materials can help build multi-level thinkers. In considering outside materials Dr. Tricker is "[R]eally interested in films, in part because--and I make this case to students--that most films in some ways started as a piece of literature, either a screenplay or some kind of textual document. I think film has an excellent place in the classroom as it can help you help students see how even something they are consuming as an audience, even though they are seeing it as something for their viewing pleasure, it is still an interpretation of a work. And so in that sense you are getting a double experience."
As he thinks toward his future with us here in the English Department, Dr. Tricker is seeking to be a part of an interdisciplinary community. "I think long term, of course following this year of acclimatizing to the classroom and getting my research rolling in the right direction, I would like to try and participate in some kind of interdisciplinary communities in the university--whether that is with textual studies and digital humanities, either way I want to be a part of that broader horizon. I was at the Asian American Studies conference in Boston, and I noted that there were multiple Loyola faculty who were there doing presentations. Seeing them presenting from various areas of the University I would like to forge connections, build relationships with people who are teaching similar adjacent type courses here as well as getting to know the faculty across the city of Chicago. I would also like to get students involved at the Newberry. I think that making interdisciplinary connections on campus while making myself available and approaching is a big goal of mine here at Loyola."
"I look forward to collaborating because it's the nice thing about this department is that there are defined areas of focus. I think a lot of times in the past I've been like the one person that sort of "does a thing", and although there isn't necessarily a specialist in Asian American here--besides Nami Mun who is a creative writer in this area--I like that I am in a place where I could have this cohort of people that are working in the same time period and have similar interests and ideas of race and class, society and imperialism, gender sexuality, and all these very topical and political concerns that are shared by more than simply one or two people. So, I do feel there is a lot of connectivity in this department."
As mentioned earlier, Dr. Tricker is currently completing research for his forthcoming book “Emerson, Asia, and ‘the Progress of Culture.’” "[My book is] centered around the Pacific Ocean and America's relationship to it, the imperial history of the US and the colonization of the Philippines and Hawai'i. I am focusing on the idea of something called "cosmopolitanism". A lot of people hear the word cosmopolitan as a word thrown around to mean lifestyle or a drink, culinary or even a magazine. Its core meaning, though is to be a citizen of the world. It has meant a kind of cultural elitism where one would show off their worldliness by speaking in different languages or serving "foreign" foods. I have found that there was a time in the late 19th through to the early 20th century where this idea of cosmopolitanism was the word that people would use almost for what we later have come to term multiculturalism. Cosmopolitanism had a philosophy attached to it that one shouldn't be too narrow minded and provincial but rather more expansive and yet this all seemed to clash with the deeper political commitments of the time. So you would have people spouting off these wonderful speeches and writings about cosmopolitanism even as immigration law was clamping down and becoming way more xenophobic or as they were starting to conquer people overseas under the American flag."
When not reading for research, Dr. Tricker enjoys "[E]ither a musical biography or a book about a musical scene. I am increasingly drawn to books and essays that are often times by poets. The writer Ross Gay in particular comes to mind, he is a professor of Creative Writing at Indiana University. Ross is a particularly interesting writer, because he blends many things together, his essays often appreciate music and sports from uncommon angles. He is one of the few writers that I have read who write about sports which is something you don't quite associate with art in our culture today."