HIST W3441

Standard for a history seminar - a book a week and a term paper. The books ranged from readable academic works to dense primary sources. She also offered seniors the option to write 2 shorter papers instead of 1 long one.

She’s a phenomenal professor and should have a gold nugget. She ran the seminar a bit differently than most others - instead of letting students lead the discussions, she wrote the questions and directed the seminar. It sounds like a recipe for a professor to blather on but in practice worked extremely well because the quality of the questions wasn’t dependent on the effort of a randomly assigned student. And because she is so passionate about the material, she actually wanted to hear us debate it. People also seemed more prepared week-to-week than in other seminars because there were never presentation weeks where we had to burn ourselves out preparing to lead the discussion. There were weekly courseworks posts, which offered us the chance to ask questions, but I don’t remember anyone being chewed out for a low effort post. Awesome class with an awesome professor - take it!

A lot of reading ~100 pages per week and a discussion section, midterm, final, final paper (10-12 pages), Scavenger Hunt (10 pictures of built environment// whatever you want)

I learned a wide knowledge base into the world of the making of our built environment in America. It was extremely interesting and Blackmar is an excellent lecturer with vast knowledge in her field. I learned about irrigation, consumerism, Taylorism, modernism, roads, landscape architecture, parking lots, tourism, and how to identify features of the built environment through our Scavenger Hunt. Blackmar is absolutely brillant. That said-- the lectures will be some of the best you've heard. She is engaging and frequently asks questions of the class. She makes connections that you wouldn't have thought of previously. She is even giving us feedback on our final paper. She offered office hours every week and cancelled class one time in order to meet with all of us that desired to meet with her on our final papers. A great professor! Feel lucky w/ Blackmar. I learned so much especially through my research paper and Scavenger Hunt. The hunt facilitated my knowledge of the course through my own discovery of the environment around me. The lecture slides were especially helpful in making connections and taking notes post-class period. They provided a comprehensive review! I loved this class and I would recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about the world around them. It made me a non-passive observer. She is deserving of her silver nugget.

Significant reading paired with discussion section and posts for section. A sizable research paper, a midterm and a final exam.

Professor Blackmar truly cares about her students. She is more than willing to meet one on one to work on papers etc. and actually reads EACH of her students papers and gives extensive comments! Blackmar met with me several times to work on my research paper (the first history paper I had written in college) and each time we met for at least an hour. She even met with me 3 times in one week. All of this and she is brilliant and super accomplished. In addition to being great one on one, Blackmar is a truly insightful lecturer. In fact, I often felt I couldn't write fast enough in lecture because everything she said was so interesting. This was my first history class at Columbia, the class that convinced me to change my major to history! A great class for anyone interested in the built environment and a unique way to study U.S. history. Its a lot of reading (not all of which is amazing) but totally worth it!

Professor Blackmar is a good teacher; she clearly knows a lot about the subject, has put together a good syllabus that seems to hit the high points of historical writing about the landscape without veering too far afield into urban studies, sociology, or political history, and has a large collection of slides relevant to the subject, which she uses to link her more theoretical lecture topics to concrete reality of the American landscape. Unfortunately, a long lecture with extensive use of slides, in a midmorning class, is just going to make students fall asleep. There's nothing to be done about it. Couple this with what seemed like some nervousness in early lectures (odd in a professor of Blackmar's tenure) that had her continually interjecting "um", and what sounded like incipient laryingitis starting sometime around midterm (she mentioned at the end of one lecture that she had a cold she just couldn't seem to shake and hoped she'd be able to lecture at all next time!) and it's not too hard to see how the class could become rather painful for some students. But the reading was great, and skipping lecture would have been pretty stupid: it simply isn't the same to read someone's academic writing on a given subject as it is to actually see extensive visual documentation of it., and there were some topics, like early suburban commercial development, that weren't covered in the re…

Just one thing about Prof. Blackmar that no one's mentioned yet: She reads and comments on every word her students write. She is also more than happy to read drafts if you ask her to, and she'll talk with you after class or during office hours for as long as you want. Everyone I've talked to agrees that she's one of the most highly involved professors in the department.