AHIS W3895

A short essay for a midterm that you work on at home plus an in-class essay that where you can select your question from a list of many. The final was a brief essay, 6 pages long. Each week there were approximately three short reading assignments plus class participation. It was very manageable.

2 medium-length critical responses; 2-part research assignment; 2 class presentations; reading

2 papers (5 & 10 page minimums), 2 presentations, 1 exhibit review

Spring '10 is Professor Hood's last semester at Columbia so take advantage of his brilliance/expertise and register for his class. You will learn a lot. He was previously the art history department chairperson at Oberlin College and has been at Columbia for just a few semesters. I was in the major's seminar Fall '09, and I think there may end up to be two diverse and adamant sentiments about Professor Hood: you either abhor or love him. I thought he was great. He is tremendously funny, really smart, and knows a lot about all aspects of art. He is very opinionated as well. If you are the type of student that enjoys sitting in a lecture hall taking notes and memorizing for midterms and finals so that you can just reiterate what Professor Hood said during some previous class, then he is not the professor for you. However, if you are the type of student who seriously reads your weekly assignment to provide yourself a foundation to state your opinion during class and be able to support your argument, then Professor Hood is for you. However, I think there are a lot of students that might feel uncomfortable with that type of discussion because it could feel like he is "picking" on you.

Sincere apologies in advance, but this is going to be prefaced with one of those really annoying but unfortunately useful instant-text-messaging-era acronyms: LMAO at previous review !! It is, bar a few opinions, spot-on. The workload for this class was, frankly, horrendous both in terms of volume and difficulty. Some of the readings were great, but others, like Kant and Hegel, were about as delightful and productive as swimming the English Channel with all 4 limbs amputated. "This is Columbia," you'd think, "par for the course." You would be wrong. I would, in all honesty, rather read the Phenomenology of Spirit again, in its entirety, IN GERMAN, than have to interact with this individual under any circumstances except one involving physical separation by a barbed wire fence, she was that awful. The class itself may not have been easy, but she hardly made it any better by 1. blatantly and unashamedly playing favourites (good for you if you fall into that category, god help you if you don't), 2. encouraging class participation and then cutting people off mid-sentence if she didn't like what they saying, 3. intimidating everyone by constantly name-dropping and showing off what a genius she was (yeah, a tenured prof with years of teaching experience getting kicks from pitting herself against a bunch of undergrads, now THERE's a level playing field) and basically just pointing ou…

(This is the body of a letter sent to the Art History Dept. by appreciative students.) Professor Grewe is a truly talented teacher. She is incredibly learned, well-spoken and enthusiastic both about her own field of study, which we touched on briefly now and then, and about the art historical methods our class covered. Indeed, she communicated this enthusiasm with ease, making methods that often seemed utterly opaque at the beginning of class both comprehensible and fascinating (but never overly simple) by its end. The true joy of this transformation, however, came not from what she told us, but from what she enabled us to discover ourselves. She strongly believes, and told us many times, that "if you don't say it, you don't understand it." Practically applied, this attitude does wonders for class participation. Professor Grewe facilitated discussions in such a way as to challenge each and every person to, in her words, "become a detective," and contribute to the working out of the investigation at hand. These investigations, however, were not confined to purely art historical texts; she assigned philosophy, psychology, and literary theory as well, showing us that the field of art history encompasses elements of many other liberal and scientific arts. The result was that the class had a better understanding of art historical methods, and began to comprehend the diversity of wa…

This was one of my favorite courses, if not my favorite, I've taken at Barnard. Reynolds seems genuinely interested in, and even affected by, students' views. He is not pretentious but will tell you when you're wrong. His passion for art history, no matter what period, seeps into every discussion. He pushes you to write succinctly and clearly. Not only did this class provide me with both in-depth and broad perspectives of the art historical field, but it also taught me to consolidate information, summarize, and debate with classmates. I also appreciated how he made weekly papers due on Mondays and graded them by class time on Tuesdays; this provided structure and forced us to be prepared for discussion. Reynolds epitomizes the "quirky professor" stereotype in the most charming way possible. He also e-mails you back almost instantly and makes time for office hour meetings.

Holger Klein is a-ok. He's not fabulous, but he's not so bad either. He's friendly, he's got a sense of humor, he's not too old yet, and he knows his stuff. He was understanding about late assignments. I tended to be bored when he actually lectured; he droned a bit and his voice is a little monotonous. My biggest problem with him was that he often seemed to have very set opinions about very open questions. He didn't try to force his opinions on others, but neither was he interested in exploring ideas he didn't gel with. I wouldn't seek him out again, but neither would I take measures to avoid him.

Two-part midterm (one take-home paper, one in-class paper), and a final paper, seven to ten pages. Reading and response questions each week, cupcakes at the end of the semester.

Try reading for this class. Try reading ALL of the stuff for this class and tell me that you did that sh*t. Then you'll be lying through your weasel ass. Because the reading is impossible unless you're a freshman who has to do five minutes of frontiers homework and then two hours of furious masturbation for the rest of the night. A midterm. Relatively easy if you do the reading. But what did I just say about the reading? therefore the test is relatively fuc*ing difficult. A final essay on a work of art from the met. This was actually fun to do.