HIST W3220

Reading average, mid-term, final, 10 minute presentation of primary document, paper on choice of assigned material (essentially a book report) given on day of first lecture - so loads of time to do it.

1 Midterm 1 Final The tests themselves are not too difficult, although some of the questions can be rather dull. His stress is less on the regurgitation of facts and more on the application and meaning of historical events. 1 15-20 page research paper on a topic of your choice, which I found to be a little excessive for a lecture class, although both the professor and TA were very helpful and offered positive insight. Weekly readings which can be excessive but are not always necessary (the Riasnovsky text is a little boring. Grabbing any other text covering the history Imperial Russia will be equally beneficial and probably a tad more exciting).

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this course. Yes, Wortman's lecutures are dry and the facts come fast and furiously. This did not bother me at all because I found the material interesting. Wortman reads his lectures off the page, which is unfortunate, because when he steps away from his notes to answer a question, or to elaborate a point - he suddenly becomes an engaging speaker - the transformation is uncanny. This was my favorite course of the semester. I took it to fulfill a requirement and was surprised at how interesting the material was to me. The readings were interesting, and complemented the lecutures really well. This may not be for everyone - Wortman's old school style may be a bit dry for some. But he is extremely approachable, he does have a sense of humor and a genuine interest in teaching.

Professor Stanislawski is alright. For the most part, he just stood in front of the class and read off of rather boring lecture slides. There were a few things, however, that really put me off about his class: 1) He does not read over the midterm, papers, or final. He may glance over them, but the TA is entirely responsible for the grading, and the TA this year (Alana Hein) was particularly tough and generally rude, although this is not the proper place to review her performance. 2) His powerpoints would typically include huge (HUGE) blocks of texts from historical documents that nobody could read due to the small print and that he would basically just read verbatim without giving much insight. 3) There were times where he would read aloud texts that he already assigned for reading outside of class. For example, he once read about 3 pages of a text that he also assigned for the discussion section. I'm not really sure how this could be seen as beneficial or productive to the lecture. 4) For the most part, the materials he used seemed to be lacking. In the discussion of Tolstoy, he showed us the YouTube preview for the remake of Anna Karenina with Keira Knightly and Jude Law. You can't tell me that there was "just no information about this topic that would be relevant!" It's Tolstoy. And Anna Karenina. Overall, I found his class to be loosely organized, yet occasionally engaging…

There's a midterm and a final (both of which aren't too bad), a 5-10 minute oral presentation on one of the readings, and a 6-8 page paper on a historical memoir.

Midterm and final, 15-20 page research paper (which I think is a little much for a lecture but was nonetheless a good experience), and relatively light reading for the history department. I skipped most of the Riasanovsky textbook but definitely take the time to read the primary source intellectual history.

Prof. Wortman was born to be a history professor--I can't imagine him in any other job. He's a pretty good professor; he's been teaching since the 60's, and sometimes it shows in a bad way. Sometimes his lectures seem to be read right out of a book that he's written or writing; that said, his lectures are very well organized and full of interesting notes and ideas. His specialty is institutional reform and the concepts and representations of power, so obviously that makes up most of the course. Even though he makes good notes about these topics, sometimes I felt like we were skipping the really interesting parts of history like foreign policy, wars, etc. The workload isn't bad. I'm a real Russophile, so I enjoyed the course, and I'd recommend it.

Professor Stanislawski is extremely knowledgable about the subject matter, and presented a sufficiently comprehensive overview of imperial Russian history. I would have liked to see him take a more argumentative stance on the course, though. Particularly towards the beginning of the semester, the lectures were almost entirely fact-based, not particularly interesting when talking about the Great Northern War and the 18th century succession crises. When he did present his own opinions, he tended to repeat himself ad nauseum, and the claims were fairly basic ones, for example his insistence on the contingency of historical events. As for the readings, while I thought the selections of primary sources was great, the only secondary source we were assigned was a rather boring textbook. There's no shortage of great historiography on Imperial Russia, as I ended up discovering while researching my final paper, and it's a shame we didn't have more of it assigned. Stanislawski's choice to highlight intellectual history was definitely a high point of the class. I have a feeling that Stanislawski would be a great seminar leader, and I was happy overall with this course, but as a lecture I would say it was not the most engaging that I've had in the history department.

midterm, easy 10 minute presentation, final, and one paper

This course may not be the most exciting in the world, but it is like having a long bedtime story about Tsars and wars read out to you. I loved his old school formal lecture style and he is just about the fairest professor ever. He is incredibly approachable and cares about his students.