It was a couple of obscure texts from the Harlem Renaissance that brought my entire English education at Transylvania together. Our American Modernism class was discussing Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Passing, two novellas that are barely in the literary canon. After a somewhat slow beginning to our discussion, the class rapidly divided into two opposing camps, arguing passionately about these texts. Ingrid clearly was a part of one camp; I was in the other. As our discussion progressed, it became more heated and suddenly morphed into what I might call a meta-educational experience. I suddenly realized that I was engaging critically with a text and with other academics at a level which undergraduates rarely (if ever) achieve—the level of academic professionals. Every scrap of my literary knowledge was bubbling to the surface of my mind: every theoretical perspective, every diverse chain of literary history. For once, students talked about the literature as if it meant something to them, and Ingrid argued with us, not as an authority figure, but as a mentor, guiding us through the text, forcing us to support our interpretations and pushing us to develop our ideas into deeper interpretations. The classroom environment she had created was one of complete respect and of serious literary study, an environment where I felt empowered to express myself as a literary critic, encouraged to share my knowledge, and challenged by a professor who wanted me to strengthen my skills even by disagreeing with her It was the moment I remembered: this is why I chose to study English.

- Brooks Hefner


I decided to pick up my English major because I was tired of swallowing everything that people tried to shove down my throat in my classes. It was through your classes that I learned to articulate myself, to explore my own opinions about texts, and to question the information that was presented to me. I would have been a very different person had I not been in your classes.

- Janie Castle


During the Creative Writing class, we met in your office to talk about a story I had written and how the class was going in general. We got around to a discussion of how writers and artists we admired managed to overlay sophisticated concepts and conceits in their work to make a rich subtext – a story within a story that added to the meaning of the work. You pointed out how difficult it was for you to be both a critic as an literature professor and a creator as a writing professor. You said something that I still remind myself of and see others trip over often - that you can't start with a big, complicated idea and then make art around it. If you are interested in the world, you will naturally draw out the complications in your work through the constant cycle of creating and revising. Art can't come out of a theory, it has to come from someplace more basic, more human.

And boy do these Art school students get this backward! :)

I also remember some monologue I was going on about sophisticated intertextual weavings in a comic we were reading and you pulled me up short by saying "Don't you wish sometimes the art was something that made you stop and think instead of just the story?" In a way that relates to the above as far as my outside the art school experiences have gone.

- Bob Campbell


What I remember taking away from Ingrid's classes is the knowledge that everything is 'readable.' In her classes, I always had a sense that what we were doing was not so much discussing a specific text or passage, but assembling a mental toolkit that could be brought to bear on any area of life. Rather than searching for particular answers or insights, we were encouraged to create methods for finding our own. Having explored hard science and theater in a fairly in depth way, and having internalized many of the mental tools to be found in those disciplines, Ingrid's classes provided a forum for me to synthesize something new for my own use—a broader worldview. The focus found in the study of literature on capital-M metaphor helped me to more fully perceive the beauty that underlies Physics, Math, Art, History, Business, and any other disciplines that have drawn my interest in the ensuing years. And I can say, with absolute certainty, that I would not have followed the course that brought me to this perspective without Ingrid simply saying, "You should be an English major."

- Matt Frederick,


In high school, English teachers tried, again and again, to convince their students that authors wrote with a purpose, constructing the plot, images, and characters with a specific intent and higher meaning. As students, we thought, again and again, that they were "reading too much into it." During "Perspectives on Literature," my first college English course, Dr. Ingrid Fields convinced me they were right. As we finished reading the English Patient, I found a small description at the novel's beginning that thematically corresponded to the rest of the novel's construction as well as a great many of our class discussions. Dr. Fields didn't just tell me that Michael Ondaatje had written a novel with certain pervasive themes and images, but she showed me how to find them.

- Jessica Hash, 2002


Taking Ingrid Fields’ "American Women Writers & Ethnicity" class was one of the most influential academic experiences of my college career. The course revealed hidden issues of debate within the world of ethnic women writers to which I had had no prior exposure. Specifically, one class reading and discussion involving the conflicted politics of African American women and hair care proved especially intriguing. Not only was I previously unaware of the hardships and pain many black women face in order tame their textured hair to meet American beauty standards, but our class discussion opened up a dialogue between a black friend of mine and me. This proved especially important when my friend decided to cut off all of her hair and let it grow out naturally. Had it not been for Ingrid Fields’ class, I would have been ignorant to the full weight of this decision and the profound statement my friend was making.

- Amye Day, 2003