Derrick Higginbotham
2021 Regents’ Medal for Teaching Excellence
Derrick Higginbotham is an associate professor in the Department of English in the College of Arts, Languages & Letters. His classroom atmosphere is described as one of intellectual vigor that enables students to excel as readers and thinkers, in a spectrum of course topics from Shakespeare, medieval literature, early modern British literature, African literature and queer theory. Higginbotham’s teaching philosophy is rooted in the power of intellectual surprises born of the need to present a complex, globalized, premodern history as legible to students, no matter the student’s background. Students speak of his agility in engaging them with texts distant temporally, linguistically and culturally from a modern-day mindset. Higginbotham collaborated with UH Mānoa librarians and created opportunities for students to navigate the conventions of the university and Wikipedia, doing independent research and collaborating with editors outside the academy. Colleagues refer to him as having a “highly affirmative pedagogy,” absolutely convinced that “the department has in Professor Higginbotham a master teacher.”
2021 Teaching Awardees