Just Your Average Unicorn

Peter is a first-rate scholar with various books and a large catalog of articles credited to him. Many of you will speak of his contributions to history, especially psychohistory, but I want to emphasize poetry, and his play, which had a staged reading at Appalachian State University. Not many people can publish in their second language; far fewer can publish poetry written in a second language and a vanishing few of those are trained in history rather than literature. Peter is part of those few. I taught poetry for 30 years, have written hundreds of poems, and that son-of-a-gun published a book of poetry before I did! He has important stories to tell and has mastered the means of telling them without formal training.

Furthermore, Peter is not only a scholar and artist, but a fine administrator. The kind who says to a faculty member, “What do you want to try next?”, intending to make whatever is said next happen. Peter, then the director of our program, asked me that question about the curriculum one day in the hallway. Off the top of my head, I said something like, “I think we should design the core around a UN model. Teach different cultures and then have a UN meeting to discuss the issues that have come up. Maybe we could start with primary cultures, then agricultural, industrial, and future cultures.” This off-the-cuff invention was made into a dynamic, challenging, and fully engaging program for 100+ first-year students in a residential college setting, thanks to a lot of effort by Peter and the rest of the faculty. He helped us get a National Endowment for the Humanities Pilot Grant and take students to New York City to the UN as part of the course. We did the program for five years before we burned out and moved on to something else. Most administrators would have been dumbfounded by such a proposal, but Peter was immediately interested and wholly supportive.

Okay, so he can write history, plays, and poetry and is a fine administrator, but can he teach? We taught a course together, so I can say unequivocally that, yes, he’s an engaged and engaging teacher. He can lecture when that is appropriate, design creative assignments, approach topics differently than most, and send students out of his class knowing and being able to use the subject matter of the course. One example of his fresh approach is his general education History of Civilizations course, which he taught the-

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matically: food through history, transportation, art, politics, economics, everyday life, etc. I may have some of the topics wrong, but that is the approach. The connections through time were followed many times, with growing opportunities to integrate the picture for any given era. In that connection, I’m sure class discussion was key. He is a fine teacher!

I love and have deep respect for Peter Petschauer. I’m in awe of his discipline. He reads The New York Times and then works all day, doing research and writing—deadline material first, poetry when it is time to relax. We can argue and discuss all of the time without any academic ego involved. It is always about the subject, never ad hominem. We have fun together. So, I am delighted to join in this Clio Festschrift to honor my dear friend and colleague, who is like no other.

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