University of Virginia Teaching Resource Center

(No. 2)

Some "Whys" Behind the "Hows" of University Teaching and Research by Robert F. Cook Professor of French University of Virginia

Foreword

This paper, the second in a series of occasional papers published by the Teaching Resource Center, was written and delivered by Robert F. Cook at the invitation of the Director of Continuing and Professional Studies to members of the FBI National Academy Seminar on November 23, 1999.

In his over thirty years of teaching, Bob Cook has offered over twenty different courses on every level, from second-year language to graduate seminars in paleography, codicology, Old French, and medieval literature. For the last few years he has concentrated on advanced language courses, particularly comparative grammar and translation.

In past decades he has written mostly about the history of the Medieval French epic (especially those poems that recount the First Crusade in romanticized fashion) and about the interpretation of the Song of Roland. He is Past President of the American Branch of the Société Rencesvals, dedicated to the epic literature of the Romance tongues.

Currently in press are two hefty editing projects. One text, the Venice-Four version of the Song of Roland (written in Franco-Italian), is to appear in the collected French versions of the Roland at the University of California Press, Berkeley, under the general editorship of Joseph Duggan. The other, the fourteenth-century adventure epic Baudouin de Sebourc, edited in collaboration with Larry S. Crist of Vanderbilt University, is to be published by the Société des anciens textes français.

Remarks Offered to the FBI National Academy Seminar
Division of Continuing Education, University of Virginia
November 23, 1999; revised in July, 2001