When Rebecca Walkowitz enters her classroom, the chatter stops. The 35-year-old carries herself like a woman nearly twice her age, but speaks at a fast clip, as if she has more to say than her 50-minute class period could possibly allow. She is equally comfortable introducing juniors to Ulysses as she is isolating vulgarities in Trainspotting for a close reading of vernacular.
“Plus she’s pretty hot,” reads one of Walkowitz’s University of Wisconsin-Madison student ratings on Rate My Professors (ratemyprofessors.com). She “rocks” another student’s “socks off.”