Ronald J. Gervais, PhD

Ronald Gervais specializes in American Literature and teaches courses in American Romanticism and Realism-Naturalism, American Poetry, and American Nature Literature. He took his B.A. and M.A. at Michigan State University and his PhD at the University of Oregon, and has been teaching at San Diego State University since 1969. His teaching emphasizes the beauty of literature. He writes, "It's the catch in the heart at the moment you suddenly realize that A Song of Myself or Huckleberry Finn is wonderful. The poetry or the prose are perfect because no one else could have done it in the way Whitman or Twain did it. That's what great literary artists do, they do something in a unique and original way that is, in some sense, beautiful. Teaching literature is about revealing that beauty." Professor Gervais's classes show how this originality is suffused with tradition. He believes that the great writers of the past become touchstones for all the great writers who come after them, and that teaching literature is also about revealing this literary tradition, showing how the inventors have borrowed.