Branka Arsic

First semester: Two in-class blue book exams (25% each), 3 essay questions Two take-home exams (25% each), 3 longer essay questions Second semester: In-class midterm (30%), 3 essay questions Take-home exam (20%), 3 longer essay questions In-class final (30%), 3 essay questions Originally, she planned for two surprise quizzes (10% each) but replaced these with two one-page essays on a chapter of an upcoming reading. She didn't think we had been doing the readings first semester so she added the quizzes; but she ended up scrapping the quizzes because she thought we would all do too badly on them. I don't know if she'll continue with the quizzes in the future. Her exam questions always reference specific passages or topics discussed in class, but on the take-home exams she also requires that you cite passages not discussed in class to support your answer. When I spoke to her in office hours, she also mentioned that she grades her students on the overall trajectory of their work throughout the semester. For reference, I got an A- first semester and an A second semester.

Manageable. Weekly readings of 50 to 200 pages (4-5 essays per week). The five grades were... -Final paper -Midterm paper -3 response papers (1 page each, just expressing our thoughts on a particular essay)

A historical overview of Western philosophy. Professor Arsic is an excellent instructor — a clear and thorough lecturer, extremely knowledgeable, totally overqualified to be teaching CC. She teaches a lecture-based class, and attendance is mandatory. Her approach to class time emphasizes deepening our understandings of the readings rather than facilitating discussion. Her lectures offer an expansive, contextualized, and fairly critical overview of Western philosophy. She is an extremely clear lecturer and she is very good at crafting a story and providing extensive historical context to the material. She does not require participation. She is happy to call on people who raise their hands, but she usually gets back to her lecture pretty quickly after their comments. She doesn’t cold call people who never speak. Our syllabus was considerably different from the official CC syllabus. Overall, I believe we read a lot less. First semester, we read portions of Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Ethics, Aurelius’ Meditations, and Augustine’s City of God; almost all of the texts from the Conquest selection; all of the Luther texts; Bacon’s New Organon; Galilei’s letter; and parts of Hobbes’ Leviathan, Descartes’ Discourse on the Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, and Rousseau’s Reveries of the Solitary Walker. Second semester we read parts of Hobbes’ Leviathan, Rousseau’s Social Co…

I liked this class a lot. If you're looking for a course that you might actually get something personal out of, I would recommend this. It's probably the only class I've taken where I experienced the "love of learning for learning's sake" thing. The material is fascinating and uplifting, and Branka teaches it passionately and eloquently. She also breaks down the difficult concepts clearly, so you actually get a good understanding of the philosophy. The class was a lecture but the size was small, so we could participate if we wanted to, but weren't obliged to. We only read Emerson and Thoreau. For Emerson, we covered a sizeable chunk of his essays. For Thoreau, we did Week on the Merrimack and Walden.

2 papers, 4-5 pages each. A midterm and a final. Both very straightforward. She asks for responses to 5 questions which touch on the main topics of each of the authors studied. All in all not too much work.

The reading load was completely manageable, although the section on Thoreau involved reading two 300-page books back to back. For Emerson, it was a few essays per class. For Dickinson, it was about 30 poems. Papers: Three short responses (1-2 pages) to whichever readings you like; a midterm paper (5-7 pages); a final paper (6-8 pages).

Professor Arsic is a incredibly knowledgeable and engaging teacher. If you are interested in taking a CC class with a non-traditional curriculum then Professor Arsic is your woman. Arsic replaced Burke and Mill, and shortened the amount of time spent on Kant, in order to make room for more contemporary thinkers such as Glissant, and earlier American philosophers like Emerson and Thoreau. She is an expert on American transcendentalist thought and is quite facile in post-colonial literature and thought. As she is the head of the graduate department in English and Comp Lit at Columbia, you are unlikely to get a more experienced, over qualified teacher for CC.

American Transcendentalism is a new course that comprises an intensive reading of Emerson, Thoreau, and Dickinson. About half the semester was spent on Emerson, followed by three weeks on Thoreau and two weeks on Dickinson. Prof. Arsić provided historical context for each author and suggested secondary readings, but by and large the course centered on analyzing the primary texts themselves. While the course was technically a seminar, Prof. Arsić gave long exegeses of each text, which were particularly illuminating for Emerson and Thoreau. There was student participation, but it was not the central focus of the class. Because two of our classes were cancelled, the number of classes on Dickinson was cut short. Perhaps because of this condensation, Prof. Arsić's analysis of her poetry was not at the same level of her explanations of Emerson and Thoreau. Prof. Arsić was accessible throughout the semester in office hours, even to us undergraduates. She also read drafts of our midterm papers and gave detailed comments on the final version. I highly recommend the course to students interested in the 19th century, which, by the way, is much more interesting than the 20th. I also recommend Prof. Arsić. She is wonderfully kind and engaging, and her knowledge of ante-bellum America is astounding.