Each morning, Gurney Professor of English Literature Derek A. Pearsall takes a bus to work. As it winds along Mass. Ave. and through Central Square, Pearsall chats with the people he meets.

"You really see life on the bus," he says from his office on the second floor of the Barker Center. "If you are travelling in a car, you are travelling in your own social capsule."

With his British accent and shaggy gray eyebrows, Pearsall looks like the stereotypical professor of medieval English literature. In other words, he doesn't immediately seem like someone who'd leave the stacks of Widener too often.

But Pearsall says the myth that academicians are detached from everyday life is just that--a myth. He and many professors say they probably interact more with the outside community than most undergraduates do.

This interaction can take a variety of forms, whether it is spending time with family members or volunteering for community organizations. In each case, Faculty say their experiences outside the University have an impact on the scholarship and teaching they do inside it.

"It's the students who don't meet a normal number of people," Pearsall says. "They're the ones who lead a really peculiar life."

DuBois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis Gates Jr. says watching movies helps him in his academic work. Many weekends, he watches four movies--one Friday night, one Saturday afternoon, one Saturday night and another on Sunday. Last weekend, he saw Living Out Loud.

In the theater, Gates says his mind relaxes enough for him to "free associate."

During one movie, he says he was inspired to write The Future of the Race, which he co-authored with Professor of Afro-American Studies Cornel R. West '74.

"The next day I called Professor West," says Gates, who also directs the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research. "I'll take inspiration from wherever it comes from."

Somebody's Daddy

Across the board, professors say personal experiences help them contemplate and understand the fields they study.

"I'm somebody's daddy too," Gates says as he gets into a blue Mercedes station wagon parked outside the Barker Center. Before arriving at work, he sometimes drives his daughter to school in the car.

Gates says his daughter likes to listen to hip-hop music as he drives her to kindergarten. As a professor of Afro-American studies, he says it is important to know about black musical expression. But without his daughter, he wouldn't listen to hip-hop because he is "so old."

Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages Peter Machinist '66 also says spending time with his son, who is in seventh grade, keeps him more attuned to popular culture.