by Karen Bullock and Aldona Bird
Middle East Professor Robert Ross knows first hand about the volatile political geography of the Middle East because he has lived it during his time spent in Beirut.
Now a professor at Point Park University where he teaches a course on Political Geography of the Middle East, he delivers powerful lectures drawn not only on the text books and essays he has mastered, but on the life he lived in Lebanon.
“So it’s not just academic to me… I can’t just think about that region abstractly” said Dr. Ross.
Joining the Global Cultural Studies program in fall 2009, Dr. Ross has incorporated into his classes teaching experience from Beirut and the University of Syracuse, as well as research into gentrification and baseball.
Dr. Ross grew up in South-Central Pennsylvania where he claims to have been a “slacker” in high school and “barely went to college.” He received his B.A. from West Chester University of Pennsylvania, his M.Sc. from University College London, and his Ph.D. from Syracuse University. He taught at West Chester while getting his Ph.D. and in Beirut for a year after getting his doctorate, and then at Syracuse for a year as an adjunct before finally finding his home at Point Park University.
During his college freshman year, his love of learning plus a determination to prove wrong one of his professors who told him that he should never become a teacher, propelled him into seeking an academic career. The professor in question told Dr. Ross “the pay sucks, and there aren’t any jobs and it’s just going to be a waste of your time.” Dr. Ross decided to take this advice as a challenge.
Dr. Ross’ love of baseball predates his love of academics. He has managed to combine these two very different passions. He grew up an Orioles fan, plays fantasy baseball and when working on his doctorate he convinced his supervisor to let him write about 19th century baseball for his dissertation. Dr. Ross writes about baseball from a sociological perspective looking at how labor issues, not just between players and owners, but also among the carpenters, brick layers, and other construction workers who built the ballparks intersect with other social and economic processes.
Dr. Ross’ published works include the peer reviewed article Contradictions of Cultural Production and the Geographies that (Mostly) Resolve them: 19th Century Baseball, and the Rise of the 1890 Players League.
“Basically what I’m trying to do with the baseball and sports stuff is just sort of show where social and economic processes intersect with the sports” said Dr. Ross.
Upon finishing his dissertation Dr. Ross taught for a year in Beirut at the Center for American Studies and Research. In a course he was teaching there about gentrification in the United States, a student pointed out that the same process was occurring in Beirut. The student’s remark led to Dr. Ross’ current research into the migration of the wealthy into urban neighborhoods, from which they force out the lower class.
While living in the Middle East Professor Robert Ross taught about gentrification in New York. Now back in the U.S. his favorite class to teach at Point Park University is Political Geography of the Middle East, where he not only gets to expose students to an area that most Americans are ignorant about, but also because it relates to his personal experiences of living in Beirut.
Dr. Ross meets students to discuss classes, grades, or any other topic a student desires, and works on courses in his office at Point Park surrounded by art works reflecting his personal academic life: window views from his family’s homes in the various places they have lived, including Brooklyn and Beirut, a portrayal of the Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon, and a copy of a traditional Palestinian icon. The art work, all by his wife, holds memories of where they met, traveled and what has inspired the direction of his academic interests.
Sometimes he brings educational anecdotes about the experience of living in such an explosive region. The topics he discusses in his class, like the culture and the wars in the Middle East are all very real to him. For instance walking down the street on a normal day and hearing explosions all around him and not knowing what was going on. When living there he always had to be aware of the political climate, and he had to be informed on when and where there was fighting going on.
“I lived there, you don’t have a choice whether or not you’re gonna follow the news or follow politics… It’s like checking the weather before you go outside” he said.
Ian Sulkowski, a freshman creative writing major, signed up for Dr. Ross’ Political Geography of the Middle East course to get a better understanding of the interactions between the U.S. and the Middle East.
“It is part of being well rounded in a very human sense. You want to have a good idea of what is going on in the world,” said Sulkowski.
Sulkowski enjoys Dr. Ross’ Middle East course because it is relevant to society today and the class material applies outside of school. Topics such as the Israel-Palestine conflict Sulkowski finds extremely relevant as it is something that is discussed in the news quite a bit. While as an American Sulkowski has been exposed to the U.S. standpoint on the conflict, Dr. Ross’ class showed him the other, Palestinian, side of the hostilities through reading essays from both views and reading Middle Eastern newspapers. He also likes the way Dr. Ross moderates “collective conversations,” and has a “clear sincere goal to educate and enrich the lives of others.”
Morgan Patkos, a junior Global Cultural Studies major, said that in his class, Revolutions, “he gives examples of when he was teaching in Lebanon.” Revolutions is a class that focuses on the globalizing forces, revolutions, in human history from the American Revolution to the Iranian Revolution. She also finds the format of the class, which is mostly discussion based, rather than straight lecture, educationally stimulating. Dr. Ross spends most of his class time discussing the readings he assigns his class, letting his students lead the discussions so they are able to get the most out of them as possible.
Dr. Ross still has a deep connection with the Middle East, Beirut in particular, as he will hopefully be taking students on a trip to Lebanon at the end of the spring 2011 semester.
He said, “I have a personal connection with it, having lived there and still having close friends there,”
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