Oral History Interview, Scott Mellor (2499)

Abstract

In his series of three 2025 interviews with Troy Reeves, Teaching Professor of Nordic Studies and Academic Staff Award winner Scott Mellor speaks about his education and his career spent at UW-Madison. He begins sharing his early academic and traveling backgrounds that led him to pursue Scandinavian Linguistics as a master’s student, and then Scandinavian Folklore as a doctoral student at UW-Madison. He shares about his memories of TA-ing in the 1990s; departmental dynamics; and teaching and developing early online classes, including the highly popular Hans Christian Andersen course. In 1999 after finishing his PhD, he was hired into the department as a lecturer. Mellor reflects on his teaching style and the ways he connects with students through pop culture in his First Year Interest Group, his involvement in the International Learning Community and the Bradley Learning Community, and mentions some of his courses, including classes focused on the Vikings, Icelandic Sagas, Scandinavian Literature, and Nordic Mythology. He also shares his memories of the TAA in the 1990s and addresses the importance of diverse voices in scholarship. He addresses academic governance, the relationship between academic staff and faculty, and the committees he served on, namely the titling committee, in which he successfully advocated for the establishment of the title “professor of teaching.” Other topics Mellor discusses include 9/11, Wisconsin’s Act 10, teaching before and after Covid, and his thoughts about receiving the Academic Staff award. This interview was conducted for inclusion into the Academic Staff Award Winners project of the UW-Madison Archives and Records Management Oral History Collection.