POLS W3180

Straightforward: Weekly readings, weekly discussion section and 4 two-page discussion papers (for 30% participation grade), two 5-7 page papers each worth 35%. The only thing to be aware of is the fact that in discussion sections there was something called the "lottery" in which at the beginning of each class someone's name was drawn from a bowl to present on that week's text. From observation, those few seconds before the drawing can become pretty tense if you haven't done the reading, so if you're someone who doesn't keep up with them just make sure to take 15 minutes to gather a synopsis of the reading and its main theme's/tensions before the discussion or you just might find yourself looking foolish in the hot seat.

Despite the last positive review, I would like to return to the tone of the previous reviews. I'm not going to say don't take this class because ultimately my experience will not be the same as that of every single individual who takes this course. However I think you should have strong reservations about taking this class if you are an intellectual risk-taker and, throughout your entire college career, have gained favor by writing papers, not to please your professor's selective taste, but rather to make insightful connections of which he/she might not have previously thought. My problem with the professor is that he writes off any argument that does not conform to his narrow taste as invalid. I thought some of the reviews for this professor were a fluke so I decided to take the course, however, for once I think people's negative experiences were perfectly on point. 1) The professor's grading system is, for lack of a better word, stupid. After going to his office hours to object to the final grade he gave me, I spent 20 minutes trying to explain to him what "weighted grading" is and why his system misuses numbers to compose an arbitrary grade. However, the only conclusion he came to was that he was not going to waste his time arguing with me about "what adds up to 100" and that nobody had ever complained about this before. I agreed that the discussion was a waste of both of o…

some reading, 2 papers (70 pc) and 4 discussion papers (30 pc)

Either Prof Hornqvist radically changed his approach to grading or these 2 reviewers are outliers, because I really enjoyed his class and I did alright. The content itself was really interesting and very diverse material. We read some of the ancients, some medieval writers and modern thinkers, so that's some of (in random order) Plato, Thucydides, Polybius, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Arendt, Said, Camus, Fukuyama, Qutb, Tocqueville and Nietzsche. There were also four films. He's a smart guy and he clearly knows his stuff, and drew interesting connections between each of the writers. It's a lecture style of class but he opened it to discussion most days. In terms of the work--he was very clear on what was expected of us in each of our papers. I'm pretty sure we spent at least half a class discussing paper topics each time he handed them out, and was available by appointment and during office hours. I dont think he was a tough grader at all. I actually scored less on the paper graded by Andreas (the TA) than the one graded by Professor Hornqvist (which was almost perfect). Overall, I highly recommend the class. You'll learn a lot and, if you work at it, prob do well.

Not bad, but that's not the point. Pr. Hornqvist should really review his grading policies or not be allowed to grade papers whatsoever.

Ok, my point is that 1) the fact that a professor says that he needs to figure out the university's grading policies in order to figure out how to grade our papers in the middle of the semester places high doubts on his objectiveness as a grader; 2) the fact that he gives 10 extra points for the second paper if "he really likes our argument" does not guarantee that we get them on objective terms; 3) at least a couple of people who did get A-range grades in the class only managed to do so because they gave up on writing something intellectually challenging and interesting in their opinion and simply adhered to whatever he told them he liked. My only fault that I got discouraged by the unproductive office hours with him in which he confused me even more about what exactly he was expecting from us and his claims that he does not look at rough drafts. I should have bombarded him with my rough drafts and allowed him to write my paper for me. But I didn't. How stupid I was.

Lot of reading but it is really interesting and if some overlaps with CC. Most weeks it is fine except for a couple books that take forever.

So my review is intended to extract some of the bias that I find when I read the previous comment. First, I would like to talk about the grading. Yes it is true the grading is harsh because he expects you to really develop an intellectual paper that proposes something new, something he hasn't seen (he is an expert in the field). So yes it is challenging but it is whether you are willing to take on the challenge and show you can do it. AAANNND you CAN when you put effort into it. For the second paper, he gave 10 extra points available and the 3 discussion papers are a sure full 30 points since he will tell you what is wrong with them and give you the opportunity to have full points in that. He is a very interesting guy and his lectures are very good, although he does use a monotone voice (but i really don't care, the voice doesn't change anything for me, i don't need an entertainer to keep me up.) He is a very good teacher with a lot of knowledge and I really enjoyed the class and the perspectives I learnt from it.

Not too bad for poli sci, although some weeks were loaded significantly more than others. The four 2-page papers are a piece of cake, but they are worth practically nothing, compared to the two 7-page papers for which it is highly unrealistic to get even an A-.

Oh, how much I regret taking this course... Professor Hornqvist is a wonderful person, very intelligent and even funny at times, but, as the last review said, he had a great difficulty communicating what he actually wanted from us in the course. The readings were excellent, I have no complaints, the discussions were thought provoking for the most part, even the 4 small discussion papers were fun to write because they had a really free format and were graded very generously. However, the 2 7-page papers, which were worth 70% of the grade, were a disaster. For the first one he gave no instructions, except for giving us 5 very-very-very broad topics, and saying that 70% of the text has to be based on at least 4 texts studied in the first part of the class. No idea whatsoever what we were going to be graded on. After practically everyone got terrible grades for the first paper, he explained to us that he was looking for a clear argument and some kind of unresolved problem in the second essay. That didn't help either. What I think was the major problem with those papers was that we were given very broad topics and instructions on the one hand and little freedom to write about something interesting and meaningful, given that around 90% of the paper had to be about the texts themselves, on the other. It would have been better and more interesting and helpful for us as students to be…