{"id":91473,"date":"2015-03-10T15:22:22","date_gmt":"2015-03-10T19:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=91473"},"modified":"2026-02-05T16:16:42","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T21:16:42","slug":"alexandre-dauge-roth-wins-2015-kroepsch-award-for-excellence-in-teaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2015\/03\/10\/alexandre-dauge-roth-wins-2015-kroepsch-award-for-excellence-in-teaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexandre Dauge-Roth wins 2015 Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Livestream: Dauge-Roth delivers Kroepsch Lecture at 4:30 p.m. March 18, 2015<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

One thing professor Alexandre Dauge-Roth wants his students to take away from his teaching is a better understanding of how their worldview is shaped by their own position, and how understanding the limitations of that position is central to learning how to read and listen without immediately judging the experiences of others.<\/p>\n\n\n

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When students and scholars gain that awareness, they are able to learn with<\/em> their subjects, instead of learning about<\/em> them. When that shift occurs, powerful learning and understanding takes place not just in class, but across a person\u2019s life, Dauge-Roth said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSometimes it takes time for students and for me,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s great when, years later, when we are facing an unfamiliar situation, we are able to mobilize or revisit some of the discussions we had together but didn\u2019t fully appreciate at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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NOTE TO READERS<\/em><\/strong>: Alexandre Dauge-Roth’s Kroepsch Lecture, <\/em>The Transformative Power of Literary and Testimonial Encounters, takes place at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 18, in the Keck Classroom (G52) in Pettengill Hall.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"W_150227_Alex_Dauge_Roth_0885\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Dauge-Roth\u2019s ability to coach students in this way is one reason why Bates has awarded him the 2015 Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching, which was established in 1985 by a gift from Robert Kroepsch \u201933. Nominated by students and alumni, recipients are selected by a committee of previous years\u2019 winners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dauge-Roth, an associate professor of French and francophone studies, will give his Kroepsch Lecture on the \u201cthe transformative power of literary and testimonial encounters.\u201d The lecture takes place at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 18, in the Keck Classroom (G52) in Pettengill Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we are learning here is, how do you establish communication or dialogue with people who are telling you their stories when you really cannot fully comprehend what their story is?\u201d Dauge-Roth said. \u201cThe exchange of knowledge is not about acquisition but the genuine development of a self-critical understanding of the limits of your own ability to truly hear people with whom you share a common space but cannot identify.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dauge-Roth has taken students to Rwanda during Short Term to hear first-person accounts of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and to create collaborative short documentaries with survivors. The fact that he is able to tackle such weighty issues through courses in French and francophone studies is not lost on his current and former students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe pushes me to places I didn\u2019t know I could go, academically and emotionally,\u201d said Brenna Callahan \u201915 of Milton, Massachusetts. \u201cHe makes events from the last century that happened on the other side of the world affect my life on a daily basis \u2026 What\u2019s most impressive is that he does all of this while studying and talking about genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"w_150227_Alex_Dauge_Roth_0382\"<\/a>
Dauge-Roth circulates among students in his French 102 class.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Dauge-Roth was born in Switzerland and came to the United States in 1993 through an exchange program with the University of Michigan, where he earned his doctorate in French literature. He came to Bates in 2005 after stints as a visiting professor at both Colby and Bowdoin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dauge-Roth said he is drawn to the study of social dynamics and polemical tensions between collective memory and personal trauma because doing so forces him to question and explore his personal role in redefining the cultural and social awareness of experiences and voices that are too often silenced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018He pushes me to places I didn\u2019t know I could go\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe more I began to work on this body of literature, the more I began to question, what is our role as people who have not gone through these experiences?\u201d he said. \u201cWhat is our ethical and social responsibility in relationship to people who have survived genocide or the AIDS pandemic?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winning the 2015 Kroepsch Award is humbling given the great faculty at Bates, he said. It\u2019s also validating to be nominated by former students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"w_150227_Alex_Dauge_Roth_0180\"<\/a>
Dauge-Roth meets in his Roger Williams office with thesis student Irem Ikizler \u201915 of Nashville, Tenn. Her work explores the concept of silence in three films on the Rwandan genocide.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cTeaching is a bit of a black box because you don\u2019t know exactly how your teaching is received by students,\u201d he said. Winning the Kroepsch Award reaffirms that \u201cthere is a long-term effect between what we talked about, the conversations we had in class and how former students are using the questions we discussed in their daily lives and development.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Dauge-Roth\u2019s classroom, \u201clistening, empathy and compassion become crucially academic in a way that is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally and personally awakening,\u201d said Cody Tracey \u201915 of Baltimore. \u201cTenderness and care are two of my most preferred attributes in a mentor or a professor, and I owe a lot of thanks to Alex for that realization.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One thing Bates College professor Alexandre Dauge-Roth wants his students to take away from his teaching is a better understanding of how their worldview is shaped by their own position.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":91491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,11011,1,14],"tags":[711,10721,5091],"class_list":["post-91473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-awards","category-batesnews","category-faculty-staff","tag-alexandre-dauge-roth","tag-french","tag-kroepsch-award-for-excellence-in-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91473"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171862,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91473\/revisions\/171862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}