Middle Fictions · English And Comparative Literature
Moderate--the novels are short, as is the point of the class. However not doing the reading is less okay in this class than it is in others. Two papers and two quizzes, fine if you've done all of the reading.
Mary Gordon is one of the best professors I've had at Barnard. Middle Fictions was completely inspiring and I enjoyed every minute of the class. Her lectures are very interesting, and the reading list is incredible. No she is not a perfect human, and she did make some comments that were not as well taken as others. However, that being said, this class totally broadened my understanding of literature and I looked forward to doing the work every week.
Mary Gordon is an egomaniac. She speaks well, with specificity and keen observation, but so clearly delights in the sound of her own voice that the effect of it is rather ruined. She picks favorites and cold calls them in class by first name. "Georgia -- why don't you play with this?" She'll ask of some student who has clearly been to office hours, if not over for dinner. Her taste in literature is as depressing as it is totally dreary. I think she might've ruined literature for me, actually, just a little bit -- or at least in the middle of the semester it felt that books, like life, were for enduring and not for enjoying. But that'll happen when you read novella after novella about women with no hope for their futures. In class she said that girls should not dress to be desired when they go out partying, and that if they do so they should at least not be surprised when they are assaulted or catcalled, prompting one student to storm out of the room. (It seems her brand of feminism is as outdated as her taste in books; society has recognized lengthy/flowery description as dull just as it has recognized slut-shaming as wrong.) She used the n-word in class trying to make a convoluted point about cat-calling, and apologized for it the next week, before sharing an unrelated anecdote about her "good friend" Claudia Rankine. Congratulations, Mary! You know a black woman! This is a s…
Substantial reading load but absolutely manageable. Skipping classes is a terrible idea since you study one work per class. Leave time to write elegant, persuasive essay (she's a writer, you won't get away with some lame summary).
Simply one of the most wonderful courses I have had the pleasure to take at Barnard. Prof. Gordon reads like a writer--her thoughtfulness and attention to detail are unparalleled. Her enthusiasm and love of the material made even the harder works accessible ("Hour of the Star" was particularly challenging but Mary's lecture on it was great). Likewise, I had never appreciated Flaubert until taking a class with Mary Gordon. My notebook ended up being full of both the in-class lecture notes as well as Mary's trademark wisdom and wit. In short, a fabulous class on a genre that is rarely studied. Don't miss out on it, seriously.
About 60 pages of reading per class, and she'll call on you the day you don't do it. One-page film response, two papers.
I loved this class. Mary Gordon is simply fantastic, and it was really refreshing not to read the same old stuff. Some people had problems with the reading list, and I didn't love it--Willa Cather and Mary McCarthy, ugh--but I read a lot of things I hadn't previously read. I wish the discussion hadn't been so stilted--Mary tends to call on people randomly, and you talk to her instead of to each other--but this was a great, straightforward English class. If you want theory, this is not the class for you. I felt like she responds to you as a writer and not as a critic.
lots of reading, and about 3 papers on terrible topics.
While I wouldn't say that this class was a complete waste of time, I was definitely disappointed after hearing such wonderful things about Professor Gordon. She is a really nice person and tries to be helpful at office hours, but the books we had to read were really not that great, and the topics she gave us for essays were absolutely horrible, as someone else mentioned. It was truly painful to have to sit there and ruin a perfectly good book (one of the few decent ones we read) by limiting its analysis to themes of FOOD... *food*, for god's sake... She's plays favorites, and the grader can be really harsh, so if you don't kiss up to Mary... well, just kiss up. Really. Or don't take the class, I guess.