R.W. Estela

Adjunct Lecturer (Honors)

Office: 137 Estabrooke Hall

ABD, English, University of Colorado
MA, English, University of Maine
BA, English, University of Colorado

Colorado’s Fourteeners shaped much of my youth, which also involved learning how to build a house, becoming a father, doing a mass-transit study for the City and County of Denver, and fulfilling a Civil Service contract as a munitions inspector. The good fortune of helping to launch the Experimental Studies Department at the University of Colorado has flowed through the years into other endeavors — as a pilot & aerial photographer, a licensed California contractor, the designer & builder of the Terrell House at the University of Maine, and the creator of a thirty-year-long series of radio essays (A Word in Edgewise) broadcast on WERU. Aikido, snowshoeing, whitewater racing, long-distance open-water ocean swimming for various fund raisers, motorcycle track days, & tending to our vegetable and flower gardens round out my days.

Scholarly Interests: Throughout, comparative literature has complemented my modern experience with timeless verisimilitude. The New England Puritans in American studies have also played a key role in my scholarly research interests, as have international sustainable architectural practices and eco-agricultural projects.

Why I Teach in Honors: Being interdisciplinary – or relating to more than one branch of knowledge – comes naturally if one lets it, and that’s what I enjoy most about life: the ability to exercise one’s free will in myriad fields. Learning is the discovery of oneself, one’s environment, and the relationship between them. Teaching is the process of facilitating that discovery through challenge and support. All of these define the essence of the Honors College.

Publications:

  • A Word in Edgewise
  • 2011: A Place Odyssey
  • Heavenly Skye
  • A Quick Tour of Dark Ages / An Island of Calm: Brederode Castle
  • Gone West: In Memoriam of Kathy Hodgkins
  • A Tribute to Toni de Gerez: The Woman Who Lived on Teraplen
  • PK Floats Takes Off in Maine
  • PK Floats, In New England Again!
  • PK Floats Migrates Back to Maine
  • Portugal: Sagres Peninsula a Gate to So Much Ocean
  • The Influence of Juan Ramon de Jimenez in the Poetry of Jose Emilio Pacheco
  • Edward Johnson’s Wonder-Working Providence: Historiography Evolved from Joseph Mede’s Clavis Apocalyptica
  • Building It In Two Languages: A Contractor’s English-Spanish Dictionary of Construction Terminology

Honors Involvement: Among my Honors lectures are The Poetry of Basho in Narrow Bridge to the Deep North (Honors 111); The Reformation: Luther’s Ninety-five Theses & Calvin’s Institutes; and The Inquisition: Lazarillo de Tormes (Honors 211); Climate Change: Designing & Building the Terrell House (Honors 212). Yearly, I have been fortunate to teach all four semesters in the Civilizations Sequence. And my Honors tutorials include Honors 338 — Shiver Me Timbers: Knavish Explorers in the Age of Discovery (Fall 2017) & Honors 333 — The Art of Making War: The Evolution of the US Military Industrial Complex (Fall 2019)