Winter 2001-2002
Storyteller Kelliher Gets Personal
Photo by Diana Watters
DANIEL KELLIHER
Education
Ph.D. 1985, Yale U
B.A. 1975, Oberlin College
Professional history
1989-present: faculty, political science, U of Minnesota
1985-1986: postdoctoral fellow, Center for Chinese Studies, U of California, Berkeley
1975-1977: teacher, English, Tunghai U, Taichung, Taiwan
Selected honors & awards
Horace T. Morse-U of Minnesota Alumni Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education, 2001
John Tate Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising, 2000
Member of President's Distinguished Faculty Mentoring Program, 1999
Resource Teacher, Bush Faculty Development Program on Excellence and Diversity in Teaching, 1994-95
Selected publications
"The Chinese Debate Over Village Self-Government." The China Journal 37 (1997).
"The Logic of 'Privatization.'" In John Ravenhill ed., The Political Economy of East Asia: China, Korea, and Taiwan. Edward Elgar Publishing Co., vol. II (1995).
Daniel Kelliher rarely goes to class without a stack of snapshots. They're not pictures of his two kids, or mementos from his myriad trips to China. They're mugshots of his students. No matter the size of the class, Kelliher is determined to learn all of his students' names.
In fact, Professor Kelliher--who urges students to call him "Dan"--likes to know not only the names and origins of students but the quirkier details of their backgrounds as well--things like "I have six toes," or "My grandmother was a belly dancer," or "I just got out of prison for grand-theft auto." (All were actual answers.)
The point isn't to probe students' personal lives or embarrass them but to "make them feel comfortable," says Kelliher. "Also, I make sure that they know the names of the people around them. A small thing like that makes a world of difference when it comes to getting people to talk in front of a large group."
Award-winning teaching
Such tactics seem to work. Students crow about Kelliher's courses on global and Chinese politics, and teaching awards have followed--most recently the Horace T. Morse University of Minnesota Alumni Association Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education, and earlier, a John Tate Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising.
"He has the ability to deeply touch and affect his students," wrote one former student. "Even his essay tests were provocative and memorable," another said. "Three years after taking his course I can still recall some of his test questions."
If students are particularly open to learning and talking in Kelliher's classes, it probably stems from his willingness to share some of his own tales--like the story of how, as a student at Oberlin College, he decided to enroll in a Chinese language class mostly "on a dare." He says, "I was bored, and on the verge of dropping out. Turns out, I was good at [Chinese]. I majored in it and the next thing you know I was living on the other side of the Pacific"-teaching English in Taiwan.
In the years since, armed with a Ph.D. from Yale, Kelliher has returned to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan several times. His particular interest in peasants and politics took him to the rural Chinese provinces of Hubei and Hunan to interview farmers, laborers, and rural-government officials. The encounters and exchanges were often memorable, sometimes funny, sometimes moving-stories he now shares with his students.
"I find nothing gets a class's attention like a tale about my fieldwork sites and the people I have interviewed there," Kelliher says. "My own bumbling in the field, my mistakes, my modest discoveries, my friendships, and my humbling failures to comprehend what's going on make for good teaching on several levels."
Personal anecdotes are a vital element of Kelliher's lectures, but he also incorporates tales told in novels and in film. Undergraduates read Margaret Atwood's harrowing novel A Handmaid's Tale in his Introduction to World Politics classes. Chinese cinema helps put pictures in students' heads that words could never conjure.
Kelliher also occasionally asks students to finish the story. He sets up the context and political aims of a particular moment in history and charges students with creating a solution. He asks, for example, how students as Chinese revolutionaries would organize peasants across their vast country.
"Only after each group has reported its results do I go into the strategy actually followed by the Communist party," he says.
Kelliher's own research has centered on peasant life in modern China and the politics of sex selection and female infanticide. Most recently, he's begun to assess how political processes and cultural values affect children around the world. But as devoted as he is to research and publishing, Kelliher's first love is the teaching that is infused by that research-as evidenced by the accolades heaped upon him by his students.
"The warmth and generosity of students is something I wouldn't have guessed," he says. "You can feel that people are responding. But you don't really realize how powerful the impact is until they write a letter like that. Getting those awards meant a hell of a lot to me. Those letters were just so touching."