Dr. Thomas Murray, Professor of English

MillerHall ~  B-3  Ext. 3551  tmurray@fsc.edu

Education:         B.A. Iona College, New Rochelle, NY (English) Summa Cum Laude

M.A. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

                                    (English and American Languages and Literature)

Ph.D. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

                                    (English and American Languages and Literature)

(Concentration: Drama Thesis: �J.M. Barrie and the Search for Self�)

Courses Taught:            American Literature, The Black Humor Tradition, Children�s Literature, Discussion and Debate, Feature Writing, Honors English, Journalism, Journalism Practicum, Modern Drama, Scriptwriting, Southern Fiction, Speech, Television Production, Texas Writers, Theater of the Absurd, Writing about Film, Writing About Popular Music.

Professional Highlights:  Teaching Roger Daltrey how to use a video camera for the first time; working on Andy Kaufman�s first TV pilot; co-producing documentaries on blues guitarist Johnny Shines and Arthur Morgan, the inventor of work-study and second president of Antioch College; spending a day with Jim Henson; interviewing performers like Cass Elliott, Tom Paxton, and Ike and Tina Turner; working as a book editor with writers like William Kunstler; hearing the Osbourne Brothers do one of the earliest public performances of their classic �Rocky Top;� visiting the temples of Nara, Japan and climbing Mount Wasakusa; working in the old Reading Room of the British Museum.

Personal Highlights:

            Spending an evening with I.F. Stone; studying acting with Mildred Dunnock and movement with Marcel Marceau�s teacher, Jacques LeCoq; introducing Robert F. Kennedy at a rally; watching Lotte Lenya perform in a workshop; meeting and seeing Beah Richards on stage; seeing Jonathan Winters perform in his prime; meeting disc jockey �Murray the K� Kaufman; my first short-wave radio; my first high school dance; founding my high school literary magazine; winning my first medal (4th place) for speech as a freshman in high school and my first place trophy in debate as a freshman in college; seeing �Philadelphia, Here I come� on Broadway ten times; seeing members of a G.E.D. program I ran graduate college; my first all-night shift as a talk radio host.

            The Hardy Boys and comic books (e.g., Bill Finger�s scripts for Batman and John Stanley�s for Little Lulu) hooked me on narrative. My first by-lined story in my eighth grade newspaper hooked me on journalism. Both gave me ways of looking at the world and having it open up to me. Later, writing led me into newspaper and book editing, radio and TV. It offered me a uniquely personal, if not always systematic, education and continually offered the excitement of childhood, meeting and wondering at things for the first time. Such discoveries touched me and shaped the directions of my life. I believe a key role of the teacher is to introduce students to a variety of experiences, subjects, and works. I am always excited and a little envious, when someone is reached deeply by the new, whether in seeing �Citizen Kane� or reading Emerson for the first time, and I am reminded how such experiences resonate and expand an individuals sense of life. Naturally, what is profoundly meaningful for one student will not interest another, but this is the attraction of an approach that mirrors the variety of life itself. For like Nature, one�s formal education can offer unpredictable insights and beauties, as it harnesses and magnifies the power of the unexpected. Whether through formal means or by happy chance, we gain our stores of experience. The more we have to draw upon, the more choices we have in shaping our lives. So seek out the new, even when it is daunting to do so. Appreciate the unexpected and what comes merely by way of serendipity. And work hard to be prepared for the expansions of mind and heart they bring. Thus you will experience the feelings, gain the insights and discover the stories that you alone can share with the world, as you make your place in it.