Eliot Smith: “The Most Interesting Man on the Hilltop!”

From the Summer 2013 issue of Hackley Review: Written by Suzy Akin

This story is part of a series of profiles of faculty named to endowed chairs. Eliot Smith is the current holder of The M.H. Davidson Family Chair in History, endowed by Marvin H. Davidson to honor distinguished achievement in the teaching of History. The Davidson Family Chair has been held by Walter Schneller (1987-2002), John Van Leer (2002-07), Andy King (2007-08), and Bill Davies (2008-12).

Music drifts from the doorway of Dr. Eliot Smith’s classroom in Goodhue Hall. It keeps playing as students wander in, settle into desks, and gather themselves toward attention. One period this morning, it was jazz – a collaboration between Chick Corea and Bobby McFerrin. The other day, because his ninth graders are studying West Africa, it was Afro Pop. Any given class period, it could be Stevie Ray or Brahms. “That’s what I love about the iPod,” Eliot says. “11,000 songs…it makes me feel powerful.”

Music is so much a part of Eliot Smith’s life and teaching that not only is it impossible to untangle the threads from his pedagogy, the attempt to do so simply misses the point. Named in 2012 to the M.H. Davidson Chair in History, Eliot Smith is, of course, a History teacher, and for Eliot, “History” is the vibrant web of cultural influences and historical events, full of potential and possibility. Like music, that which we call “history” is shaped by cultural and intellectual energy and, in turn, shapes the cultural and intellectual pulse of what comes next.

Eliot came to Hackley almost by accident, hired in 2004 as a one year leave replacement teacher. He was teaching in Spartanburg, South Carolina, flew up for an interview, and had a great day. “You come up the hill and it seems very rarified there on the Quad, surrounded by Tudor. But there were kids everywhere, activity. It was a wonderfully noisy place. The atmosphere said this was a place where students had a voice, where they were confident and eager to share.” Impressed, he called his wife, saying, “This is a really unusual place. I think I really like them, and they like me….”

For a teaching couple moving to New York from South Carolina, the move presented no small challenge. Eliot’s wife Anne Longley, a French teacher, did not yet have a job, and Eliot’s was just a one year commitment. Yet they came. “We came up here driven by that sense of the welcoming character of Hackley.” And then it all worked out. A Hackley French teacher resigned unexpectedly and Anne was hired to fill the vacancy, and midway through that first year, a full time history position became available. “We were pretty elated,” Eliot says. “We felt we’d landed in a wonderful school.”

Serendipity, perhaps? It’s nothing new for Eliot Smith, whose life itself has been a series of serendipitous pursuits. Even his PhD in history seems the result of serendipity, rather than the expected destination. Before Eliot started his undergraduate studies, he spent fifteen years on the road as a professional musician. At 19, Eliot was playing at London’s Marquee Club, a venue frequented by emerging 1970s bands including Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull. “There was this one beat up dressing room that everyone used, and the signature of every possible rock luminary was there, he recalls. “As a 19 year old kid, all this made a huge impression on me.” A native of San Francisco, Eliot returned to the Bay area and became involved in the East Bay Grease movement-- the Bay City funk style established and built by Tower of Power, Santana, and others-- in a band called Powerplay. The San Francisco scene was exploding, with the strong presence of interracial blues and funk bands – including Sly and the Family Stone and Jefferson Airplane – influenced by improvisational black styles. “I was proud to have been part of that,” Eliot says.

He played professionally until 1986 in bands and ensembles of all sorts. But, he recalls, “after 15 years, the future didn’t look as rosy as I had anticipated, though I loved the performing itself. Every time you come home off the road, your plants are dead, there’s an inch of dust on your stuff…. It didn’t feel like there was much future to it, just more carrying on with that particular lifestyle, and I didn’t love it well enough to imagine myself still doing it in my 60s.” Yet he also didn’t have much of a sense of what else he wanted to do. “Except,” he recalls,” in my last gig, in Henderson, Nevada, I wrote a letter to my sister [who taught history at Bates College] saying ‘I’m kind of tired of this road life. I’m thinking I could go back to school, maybe become a teacher. I kind of like history.’ And she said, ‘Why don’t you give it a try.’ That’s what I did.” He applied to Bates, and “those crazy people admitted me.”

Eliot was a guy in his mid-30’s carrying a briefcase, his sister’s welcome present, around the Lewiston, Maine campus, and “My classmates said, ‘We couldn’t decide where you’d come from or what you were doing. We thought you were a spy.’ But for me it was a great time to go to school. I had a great many questions I wanted to pursue, and once I got over my fear of not being good at it, it was a wonderful experience.”

Bates led to a stint in graduate work at Brown University with a Mellon scholarship, but the program did not suit him. Upon connecting with an ethnomusicologist doing early cultural analysis in the area of African and African American music at SUNY Buffalo, Eliot enrolled in the American Studies program there. The department was founded in response to the Civil Rights era demand for more ethnic and cultural studies, and Eliot worked with gifted teachers from many cultures, including several who belonged to the Six Nations group. “One of the Six Nations teachers took a liking to me and invited me to work with him as his assistant. He carried on the oral tradition of keeping and passing along the Seneca creation story, which was passed down through generations of his family. He would start a story with his eyes closed and very soft tones so you would lean in to hear him, then his eyes would open and his voice would gain force and he would pull you right in to the story. I admired the eloquence. If your people carry their history orally you’d better hope you have great story tellers.”

His work amidst these great influences complemented his interest in social justice, and built on his experience with musical forms influenced by African American roots, and he delved into the intersection of identity with class, gender and race. “These are powerful components of the American identity, which I have found compelling,” Eliot reports. “The liminal place, the boundary territory, is a very American place to exist.” Fueled by this fascination with this liminal place, his dissertation on “Fandom” – the relationship between fans and their stars, with particular focus on American crossover figures -- applied an American Studies/History lens to the performance world in which he’d grown up. “There’s a narrative relationship here, a construction that reflects the major concerns of American society. Take Elvis, for example. He was the first ‘atomic age’ star – crossing over from radio to film and television, and it’s not surprising that his ‘moment’ coincided with the Civil Rights period, a time when Americans were thinking about what it means to be influenced by and exposed to cross-cultural styles.”’ Eliot explains that Elvis is “a formulation that reconciles the fusing of all these different ethnic styles in American culture as something wonderful rather than dangerous and subversive.”

“When people talk about the ‘decline of American music,’” Eliot says, “the way they explain the decline reveals more about them than about the music itself.” For example, he explains, hip hop and rap music have been condemned as “the decline of good melody -based song writing into a morass of relentless word play. It’s the same language that was used to denigrate black styles of the Harlem Renaissance., suggesting that these forms debased proper European form with rhythmic utterances and were therefore less of an art form. But, while hip hop is still freighted with the “this is not music” judgment, it’s exactly that resistant style that is compelling to audiences.”

In addition, he notes, there are nuances to the art form that may be lost on those who come from outside that culture. “The rhythmic dynamism of hip hop goes back to West African trance-driven music, which, through repetition and rhythm achieves a transformational effect – it takes you out of yourself to a different state of awareness. Those who don’t understand it just dismiss it as ‘bad.’” Yet it’s a deep and powerful art form, described by author William MacNeil as a force that taps into the very core of community. Eliot explains, “Humans get real benefits from ‘keeping in time.’ They gain feelings of solidarity. In early cultures, this created opportunities for shared hunt experiences, shared food, and other evolutionary advantages stemming from the effort to keep a beat, to dance together. I have always thought this is essentially healing in its quality. There is a therapeutic value to moving together.”

The power of expressive culture is why music has always been a central part of Eliot’s teaching, and explains the music flowing out his classroom door every day. “We are oftentimes short of ways to deal with the pressures of modern life – particularly in adolescence. Tapping into the expressive potential matters.”

Eliot teaches two courses now at Hackley, the ninth grade history course, Cultures in Conflict, which he played a key role in designing, and the senior elective he created, History of Media and Mass Culture. The ninth grade course focuses on rise of Europe during the early modern period, 1350 through the French Revolution, exploring the key conflicts human populations faced using a theme-based approach. In nominating Eliot for the Davidson Chair last year, a colleague wrote, “Largely due to [Eliot’s] effective leadership…"Culture in Conflict in the Early Modern Period" has proved a superb one in preparing Hackley freshmen for both the content and skill demands of subsequent courses. The course was clearly thought-out, the materials carefully chosen and the scope and sequence has been meticulously planned to weave skill and content together in a way that provides students with a firm base on which to build.”

Eliot brings infectious enthusiasm and intensity to the course. Ask him to describe it, and he tells you about the ripple effects of classical ideas transported by the Crusades into Europe, seemingly innocuous ideas that build into incendiary conflicts and cultural shifts right through the Protestant Reformation, the realigning of class structure, the conversation about “natural laws” later enshrined in the American Revolution, and the ever-evolving notion of what it means to be a citizen. This may sound overwhelming, yet Eliot’s presentation provides an intellectual context into which these ideas, trends and events have a framework students can understand. Because it is not linear, the structure naturally allows the integration of many facets – there is a place to weave in Galileo, a place to weave in West African culture, Cortes and more. This approach encourages analytical thinking and challenges students to write thoughtfully about the past and the world today.

Eliot’s senior elective, History of Media and Mass Culture, looks at the history of the important media of the 20th century – radio, TV, film, print media, dance, music and drama. He reports, “We look at semiotics as a method to decode the symbols, to get under the surface of ideology, and to build a vocabulary with which to decode visual media in meaningful ways. The course was inspired by a course Eliot taught in grad school on popular music which, he says “didn’t cohere ultimately because it didn’t recognize that popular music is just one strand amidst a whole set of mass-produced influences. This course teaches students how to use a broad range of texts to make arguments and understand culture and history more deeply.” Felicia Schwartz, Class of 2010, was in Eliot’s Media class her senior year and writes, “We wrote and produced an original radio show, watched and critically examined the best movies and probed into the psyche of a typical music fan, among myriad other fascinating lessons that I would have never dreamed could be serious academic work. Doc Smith proved to us, through the readings, lectures and class discussions, that studying media went far beyond simply talking about our favorite TV shows. We learned about class, race and gender, and we saw firsthand how challenging it is to produce smart and engaging programming. Doc Smith sought to really challenge us and to make his classroom a place for smart dialogue. As a history major seeking to pursue a career in broadcast journalism, the impact Doc Smith had on me pretty much explains itself.”

Upper School Director Andy King, also a History teacher, comments, “Few teachers are as devoted to the craft of teaching as Eliot. He thinks about how to challenge, engage and support all of his students. He is remarkably observant about how his students learn and adapts accordingly to make sure that he is meeting the students where they are and then working with them to advance their skills and understanding.” Drew Schwartz ’10 concurs, reporting, “Dr. Smith is a truly gifted teacher who expanded the meaning of history and brought the subject matter to life, no matter the specific topic I studied with him. He is also the type of teacher who inspired me to always exert my best effort. Dr. Smith inspires confidence in all of his students, so that they believe in themselves and become proud of the work on which they put their names.”

His approach is undeniably vigorous. The inspiration he offers students is coupled with the mandate that students actively engage in their learning experience. A colleague noted, “Eliot's most important contribution to our campus is that he pushes all of us--teachers, students, and administrators--to look at what we do in new ways. Are we achieving what we say we do? Do we know what we want? Are we true to ourselves and our mission(s)?” It’s not just about learning “stuff.” It’s about committing ourselves.

In committing himself in this way, he has tremendous impact on his students. Jay Mehta ’09 writes, “Dr. Smith attempts to connect his students with the pulse of others and the world more than any other teacher I’ve had, and continues to do so in our lives. He is unsurprisingly the teacher I keep in touch with most now and is one of the reasons I am always excited to go back home. Dr. Smith continues to embody and remind me of the good and beauty in the world.” Graduating senior Rachel Chan, his advisee for three years, reflects, “Every day I walk into class, I can expect Dr. Smith to approach each lecture with humor and passion. However, what I will remember most is his never-ending support and care outside the classroom. He has singlehandedly made my Hackley experience worthwhile.”

Always, in the classroom and beyond it, Eliot remains a performer, and students appreciate it. Pete Barrett ’11 commented, “Doc Smith is the Hackley Dos Equis man: ‘The most interesting man on the Hilltop!’” Though for Eliot, it’s far from a cult of personality. “Because I am a performer first, I’ve always had a view of teaching that included ‘style.’ Dynamic style does not replace the skilled methodical approach, but it’s important to recognize and reflect on who you are in the classroom and what your strengths and weaknesses are. A successful performer can move people to become lifetime learners. The best part of thinking about teaching as a performance is exactly that. Not to ignore the nuts and bolts of rote learning and repetition, but you need to figure out a way to make it come alive.”

“Performance” is the theme that connects the seemingly disparate threads of Eliot’s life, from his days as a professional musician to his graduate thesis to his work in the classroom, so it is no surprise that the role for which he may be best known at Hackley is as musical director of the Hackley Upper School Coffeehouse. His colleagues applaud his efforts. One noted, “Eliot literally has created a time and space for students' voices to be heard in our community in an open and supportive atmosphere. The Coffeehouse has transformed our Upper School culture, taking the ballad, the folk song, and the jazz and classical performance from academic readings to the level of community praxis where students openly share who they are to and for one another.” Still, Eliot says, “I can’t claim a whole lot of credit here. The students are thirsty for community events like this and they drive it every step of the way. All the faculty who give their time are facilitators. If you see yourself as more than that, you should get the hell out of it, because that’s where you kill the energy and sincerity of it.”

Perhaps his image of himself as facilitator is why receiving the M. H. Davidson Chair in History by nomination of his faculty peers was such a surprise and an honor. “My life here at Hackley has been pretty magical. This recognition makes me proud because it is the outgrowth of some sincere work that has been driving by a sense of belonging. It’s a pretty great honor, to be recognized for the work you are doing by peers you respect. It suggests the community values you in that way. I don’t take that lightly.”

(Read more Faculty News stories here.)