Feminist Fairytales · First Year Writing @Barnard
One short close reading assignment, one 3-4 page close reading analysis paper, one 3-4 page paper critiquing an author, one 5-6 age research paper. We watched Frozen as homework. Really chill, doable class. Professor Usher is super available and helpful if you ever find yourself in need of guidance for writing. Her critiques are also very beneficial.
Content is very interesting, mostly discussing women's portrayal and roles in different fairytales. Some fairytales were pretty gruesome. All the readings are short. Professor Usher is the nicest, most caring professor ever. Really good at encouraging discussion and creating space for every single person to voice their opinions. The class is lowkey therapeutic.
We'd get readings we had to do before class, but they were relatively short, and then we would spend the majority of class having an open discussion. We had 3 essays. We had a week to submit a rough draft, then we'd have a meeting with her, and then have about a week or two to submit our final draft. I'd say we got like 2-3 other short assignments throughout the semester. Long story short, the workload is fairly light and very manageable! And the readings are super cool and interesting, so it isn't hard to do either :)
Going into this class, I was super excited to dive deeper into fairytales and look at them through a feminist lens, as that's something I tend to do whenever I do read them, and Prof Usher also had amazing reviews, so I was EVEN MORE excited. This class features so many great short stories and poems that drove AMAZING discussions in class. We'd also always start class with a ~10 min check-in where we talked about how our weekends were and stuff, it made me feel so much more connected to my peers, and I actually got to know everyone, it wasnt like I was just in another class silently working and taking notes. At the end of this course, we all grew so close and felt so comfortable sharing our thoughts and interpretations. Prof Usher does a fantastic job at helping guide discussions, while at the same time giving us the freedom and space to explore the ideas we wanted to talk about. She is so sweet and kind (and funny), pleaseeee if you can take this class! I had so much fun :)
Super understanding and just wants you to learn
Incredible class and professor. Favorite I have taken so far. This is the best possible writing class for first years.
shes very considerate of u submitting late if u have to, and this class is a pass/fail so its chill. im planning to take more classes w her bc i js rlly like this woman
Omg shes great shes like the nicest and rlly funny and sweet and not pressuring i love her
3 final papers. I did all of them basically the day before
It's very obvious that prof Usher wants you to do your best in the class. She wants you to put in the effort and participate in class. She DOES cold call on students but shes a nice enough teacher that I think if you mention to her that you are anxious about it she'll stop. One thing she does do is make you put your electronics away (no phone, no laptop, no iPad) during her class. But halfway through we managed to convince her to let us use our iPad for notes (rather than on paper).