John Dwyer is now retired and experiencing to the joys of lethargy. He hails from British Columbia, which is a heck of a lot nicer place to come from than Toronto. John reluctantly came to Ontario to teach in 1985 and ended up at York. Despite the climate, he liked York University a lot because it has as diverse a student body as the University of Toronto without being anywhere near as stuffy. John taught many courses in many different Departments at York but towards the end of his career he found a home in the Humanities Department where he taught a course entitled The Modern Age, whatever that means. For him, it meant Baudelaire, Dostoyevsky, Kafka and other notable depressives. His other undergraduate course was a third year offering called Ideas of Love, which argued that romantic love was a complex and strange evolution whose future is, at best, problematic. Past partners and friends suspect that John may be rationalizing his own failures as a love. Rounding off the recent teaching resume, John developed a course entitled The Enlightenment Project, which paired off eighteenth-century writes like Rousseau and Hume with modern critics and interpreters like Derrida and Deleuze. Tres cool.
John obtained his doctorate in the History of Ideas at the University of British Columbia in 1985 and held teaching positions at UBC, Simon Fraser University and North Island College on Vancouver Island. The university positions were pretty typical of teaching jobs in the postsecondary arena, but North Island College in the early 1980s was a distance education institution, where John got to pretend he know something about sociology, anthropology, philosophy as well as history. Occasionally, he got to drive a learning mobile (a very unstable truck with computers in the back) into what are now tourist attractions but what were then remote locations like Tofino and Eucleulet. That experience, as well as the students he met, was the most interesting part of his life. After that, his life became pretty mundane.
He did, however, become an established author of numerous articles, edited collections and 2 books that focused on the economist/philosopher Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. His dubious claim to fame is his argument that not only would the father of modern economics (i.e. Smith) detest modern global capitalism (if he was still around) but also that he was already skeptical about the capacity of communal ethics to survive capitalist acquisition and egotism as he prepared to kick the bucket (or die for those who haven’t seen It’s a Mad, Mad World). Dwyer is also well known for his writings on eighteenth-century sentimentalism, which he persists in believing has much more contemporary relevance than romanticism. So-called chick flicks, for example, are much more sentimental than they are romantic. Real romance is too intense to survive as anything other than a literary trope.
John is not just a pretty face (see picture) or a brilliant mind (see picture and estimate forehead). He has written a textbook on Canadian Business history, which was used for a while at the Schulich School of Business and some other business courses before they discovered its subversive qualities. He has also published (with a nice guy called Tom Klassen) a book entitled How to Succeed at University that has changed the lives of at least two people (have testimonials). Typically, students buy the book, but their parents read it. The hard copy is available from Amazon, UBC Press and York University. John gets about 50 cents a copy, but he’s willing to give that back to anyone who can prove that they have actually read it.
For much of his career, John combined contract faculty teaching with administrative positions at York, McMaster, and other places. He’s always preferred teaching to administration, which he refers to as administrivia. And he’s taught everything from natural science to intellectual history, including kinesiology, which used to be called physical education but benefitted enormously from rebranding. He held a special contract at the Schulich School of Business for several years to teach the large undergraduate course in Critical and Analytical Thinking for Business. Just about the only thing he hasn’t taught is brain surgery, which even he thinks would not be a good idea. But, what the hell, if the price is right….
A rock music fan, John’s favourite musicians include: Joy Division, Radiohead, Sigur ros, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Dead Can Dance, Peter Gabriel, Bjork, Richard Thompson and Pere Ubu. More esoteric likes include Art Bears, Soft Machine, After Dinner and Honeymoon Killers. Right now he’s hooked on a group called The War on Drugs. His favourite foods are “as exotic and spicy as I can get it – just as long as it’s not fish”. He hates fish, despite all attempts on the part of his girlfriend (what she likes to be called) to hide it in stews and casseroles. But food is less important to him than the libation that accompanies it. What he really wants (is ‘needs’ too strong a word) is good wine and malt whiskey. He will drink beer, however, if there is nothing else around. The best beer in the world, by the way, is Belhaven Heavy. You have to get it on tap in an authentic Scottish pub, where they take drinking very seriously indeed.
John is now 67 and the picture on this website is probably a lie from when he was in his 50s (hey, who wants to draw attention to bodily decline?). He would prefer that everyone to remember him as he once was (even if that was not especially pretty). In his mind, he’s really a child of the 60s and can even remember one or two things about psychadelia. Not everything about the 60s was good, by the way. For instance, he’d like to completely erase the phenomena known as free love. Love is never “free” as you’d know if you ever took his love course. Perhaps he’s just a bitter old man. The great thing about teaching courses in the humanities is that you can indulge your obsessions and foist all your life grievances on unsuspecting students.
What else can we say about him for those who are still reading? He was married for 24 years and has a daughter who would not want him to share her age. He thinks he ‘understands’ young people, but she may well beg to differ. He’s currently partnered with a woman who is far too good for him. His hair is completely his own (rumours to the contrary notwithstanding), but not necessarily its colour.
It’s kind of fun writing these things, if you don’t take them too seriously. My occasionally serious side can be found in Research Interests.
