Dr. Maria Euchner enjoys the finer things in life. Beyond being FYP’s morning DJ with impeccable taste, Dr. Euchner loves pairing wine with food, travelling around Europe, and, of course, Caravaggio. Readers of The Watch also have great taste: you nominated Dr. Euchner for faculty member of the month. We sat down with her to answer your burning questions and to end this year on a high note.
SS: What do you do in your free time?
ME: What free time? There isn’t much. I swim a lot. I love cooking, I love reading. I love being active outside. I love spending time with friends. I love watching movies.
SS: What’s your favourite food/wine pairing?
ME: It’s an interesting challenge, because I’m vegan. I’m whole-food and plant-based, so that makes it more challenging in interesting ways. A very basic pairing that I just love, which always works, is pasta with tomato sauce and a nice glass of Chianti classical.
SS: Any favourite movies?
ME: Too many. I love Singing in the Rain. 1930s to ‘40s musical movies. I love all the films by Wes Anderson. I love Baz Luhrmann. I love Terry Gilliam – so I love idiosyncratic filmmakers.
SS: What kind of music do you listen to?
ME: All kinds, except for new country. That is an abomination. And Taylor Swift. I’m the DJ for FYP and so I mix it up. I love classical and punk rock. I love some 80s pop, because that’s the music of my childhood. I love jazz, gospels. I really love everything.
SS: You do a majority of FYP’s art lectures. Do you have a favourite artist of all time?
ME: I don’t have just one. But Caravaggio is huge in my life right now. I organized an entire trip last summer around Caravaggio. So for 6 and a half weeks, I traipsed through Europe chasing the Caravaggios. I’m obsessed with him at the moment. But my first love was Franz Marc, a German impressionist. I fell in love with him when I was 16, and modernism is also the time that I worked on for my PhD. I spent a lot of time with modernist art.
SS: What’s a standout Caravaggio for you?
ME: The Beheading of St. John the Baptist. It’s the only one he ever signed, and he signed it with the blood from John’s severed head. It’s an extremely impactful painting. I stood in front of it for about an hour and a half, and wept most of that time.
SS: Do you have any philosophers who impact the way you think and live?
ME: Hegel. I think I’m dialectical in my approach, and I understand things through Hegelian dialectic. That’s how a lot of things make sense to me.
SS: It’s the end of FYP. What’s something that students should keep with them when it’s over?
ME: Curiosity and openness. If eventually they could realize that being confronted with certain concepts and ideas that made them uncomfortable, hopefully they can find that that was productive in some way. It may not be immediately present to them, and it could take years.
SS: What’s your favourite thing about King’s?
ME: Its close knit community, the collegiality, the possibility of close engagement between faculty and students. I really love that.
