David L. Paletz
“A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.”
— Hamlet
“A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.”
— Hamlet
On the occasion of David’s retirement from Duke in 2014, two of his former students, Ann Pelham and her daughter Catherine Cullen, endowed a fund at Duke to honor David’s imaginative teaching. Since then, other students have contributed to the fund. David has participated in judging applications for the David L. Paletz Fund for Innovative Teaching awards from the start.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long
David was a prolific writer. He was among the pioneers of the field of politics and media, and he published original and striking essays on a wide range of topics. The rough thematic subdivision is meant to help readers navigate his original and wide-ranging work. We recommend that all those who remember David as an inspired teacher begin by looking at his own account of teaching and writing at Duke, 2 pages written for Chanticleer, Duke's Yearbook for 1970.
David wrote and edited many books. Here he just wanted to draw attention to three, on media and politics, terrorism and the media, and public service advertising.
We wish David had written more on teaching. But the short pieces collected here give readers a flavor of David as a teacher.
Political humor, swearwords, the difference between the authority of a basketball coach and a mayor, and more.
Sherman's March, The Naked Truth, and different types of cinemas in the 1960s.
Terrorism, the military, the curious boomerang effect of politically committed movies, and the television coverage of the Watergate hearings.
Ronald Reagan, What if America had a Monarch? political analysis on television, presidential conventions and congressional campaigns.
Death and pornography in politics and the media.
David was always passionate about film. At Duke, David pioneered the teaching of film. He taught his students to appreciate the art and politics of movies ranging from the musical Singing in the Rain to A Certain Kind of Death. Many of his students told him that over the years they had taken great pleasure in showing "David's movies" to their own children. We are delighted to include reminders of David's favorite films here. Some of these films he taught regularly. Others were personal favorites. And many belong in both categories.
