Professor Jeanne Clark to retire after nearly 40 years at Willamette

Prof. Clark posing with her whippet, Sammy. Photo by Patricia Krepel.

When students visit the office of professor Jeanne Clark, they are first greeted with sniffs from her whippet Sammy, whom she occasionally brings to class. Clark has been teaching cinema studies and media at Willamette for almost 40 years and is one of the longest-employed faculty at the university. She will retire at the end of the academic year. 

Clark has a master’s in Oriental Studies, now East Asian Studies, from the University of Arizona, as well as a doctorate in speech communication with a focus on rhetoric. Although she is known at Willamette for her interdisciplinary work, she specializes in Israeli and Palestinian media.

“I’ve been fascinated with Israel and Palestine for years,” she said. 

Early in her career, Clark lived for 2 1/2 years in East Jerusalem, where she became intrigued with the conflicts of the region and how the experiences of people in both territories were portrayed in the media. She returned to the region in 2002 and was part of a team of observers during Operation Defensive Shield, during which Israeli soldiers occupied parts of the West Bank and increased restrictions on the local population during a period of Palestinian uprisings known as the Second Intifada.

Clark has taught around 20 different courses throughout her career at Willamette. Apart from Israeli and Palestinian film, one of her favorite classes to teach is on the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Reflecting on how the university has changed during her career, Clark remembers that when she got to Willamette, first-year students were especially talkative in class during the first few weeks, which surprised non-first years and created division. It took years to see a shift towards the active and collaborative environment between the entire student body that the university is currently known for.

During Clark’s first years at Willamette, the first-year seminar — then called the “Worldviews Program” — was significantly different from the current college colloquium. Students had a common core of texts that introduced them to how different thinkers have viewed the world throughout history, including figures like Karl Marx, Charles Darwin and Charles Dickens. They also studied the intellectual history of Victorian Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, among other time periods and world regions.  

“Gradually, faculty were tired of trying to teach things that were so radically out of their field, and we shifted to the program we now have, which has its own advantages,” Clark said. 

Along with other faculty, Clark also led a study abroad program in Greece that focused on archaeology and the origins of Greek rhetoric. “It was particularly significant for me and for a lot of the students who participated,” she said. 

The Greece program was one of the many study abroad opportunities created during Clark’s tenure. Willamette students can now spend a semester or year abroad in over 60 destinations around the world. Likewise, research opportunities have greatly increased since she first came to Willamette. The most significant is the Carson Grant, which allows students up to $3,000 in funding for research projects over the summer, a grant that Clark oversees. 

As the director of student academic grants and awards, Clark also works with students who apply for the Fulbright Program, which provides scholarships and grants for recent graduates, current students and professionals to conduct research or teach abroad. “We are fortunate to have five Fulbright semifinalists this year,” she noted proudly when discussing the achievements of the students she works with. “Finalists will be announced later in the spring.”

However, not all changes that Clark has observed during her time at Willamette have been for the better. “I would like to see Willamette returning to a real concern about the humanities. I’ve seen that diminish over the years,” she said. Clark is trying to convince others in the field that without strengthening academic programs in the humanities, teaching critical thinking and problem-solving in higher education will prove ineffective.

The declining interest in the humanities is not an easy problem to solve, but the field must not be neglected, according to Clark. “I have no suggestions for solving the problem. We are facing a demographic cliff and budgetary issues. But I would hope to see more done to restore the humanities,” Clark said. 

As an undergraduate, Clark's professors worked to establish a personal relationship with her. Now, years later, she has attempted to "pass on and repay" this care with her own students. “I have loved through the years sharing my home with students, having them over for meals, sometimes coming over to cook. Just a chance to get to know each other informally,” Clark said.