Brian O'Keeffe

Brian is an engaging, informative, and incredibly knowledgable professor. His existentialism class is driven by his signature close-reading technique -- going over key passages and chapters in the texts we read for class and opening discussion for interpretations and connections. Brian is always encouraging us to find connections between the texts we read and the larger French canon, other works of philosophy and translation studies, and anywhere we can sprinkle in some comp lit and literary criticism. The guy is also just funny as hell -- class is lighthearted yet pointed and guided as needed. Brian brings in personal stories, aspects of pop culture, and humor in a way that I was always comfortable sharing my thoughts however outlandish or out-there they were. The class was probably 70% French and 30% English. If you have not taken a class with this legend you absolutely should in your time at Barnard/Columbia.

Genius. Ask him how to write an essay (from scratch) and he'll break it down for you and blow your mind. He doesn't seem to like it when you show up late to class, so he'll stop talking and wait for you to get to your seat. I had him for two classes and he was my major advisor. Overall he's probably the best Comparative Literature professor I've taken at Barnard.

Although I genuinely don't think that he had bad intentions, this was one of the most bizarre classes I've ever taken. Firstly I'll say that this class is required for the French major/minor and in terms of that, it was fine. You can do well in this class, it shouldn't be the deciding factor for whether or not you do the minor or major (also Major Texts I with Postlewate is a way better class that I actually learned a ton in, so it's not the Major Texts classes, I think it's just him). It was meant to sort of start where Major Texts I stops around the 18th century, which is why many people take it before MT1, because it's slightly more modern lit, but I don't feel particularly knowledgeable about post 1700 French literature after taking the class. The first two months of the class were spent – and I am not exaggerating – reading Manon Lescaut out loud, page by page, line by line. Not students reading out loud, just him. We would periodically skip a few pages and he would just keep reading which was often hard to follow as people sometimes had different editions or just took time to find the sentence in the middle of the page that he decided to start at. Every so often he would pause and connect the text to some philosopher or other theorist which I wouldn't mind at all, but it often felt (granted this is my opinion) that he kind of just wanted to show the class that he knew X…

Took this class Fall of 2022 and still thinking about it... Brian O'Keeffe is a genius — a brilliant professor and a hilarious guy.

One of the best professors I have had at Barnard/Columbia. This is a required class for the Barnard Comparative Literature major, and O' Keeffe did a terrific job with it. I'll admit it took me some time to warm up to him—I see how some find him pretentious or intimidating. He doesn't really smile a lot or make small talk with you if you cross him, he's a bit hard to read. But when he's in class, he's amazing. Incredibly engaging lectures. No time ever spent on something irrelevant or unnecessary. He is extremely sharp and makes connections you would not expect. His papers are not easy to write—his prompts are challenging and his expectations are not the usual kind that many professors want from you (he doesn't want you to follow a traditional structure, he hates Times New Roman font, he only takes hard copies)—but are extremely rewarding: you learn a lot in the process. Plus, he assigns them two weeks before the due date, and will go over a first draft or outline if you share it with him a week before he'll provide quick and thorough feedback. I loved this class and was sad when it ended. I plan on taking any classes O' Keeffe teaches in the future.

Brian is the goat. I learned so much and as somebody who is always embarrassed about speaking, I improved so much and he really encouraged me during the translation exercises he does. I went from scared of them to actually looking forward to them. The translations themselves are also hilarious. His fill in the blanks were also full of different excerpts from famous literary works, so they were not boring at all(shoutout to the stuff on Dracula). He is very funny and isn’t afraid to go out of his way to teach stuff he considers important, such as slang and bits and pieces of French culture. Overall what a joy. Taking him again for major french texts next semester.

Of the two classes I've taken with O'Keeffe (one in French, one in English), I've found that they have a similar structure. You have 4 essays that will be your grade (despite what his syllabus says, with several more writing assignments than we ever actually do) and you basically get some reading for every class. Sometimes you read one or two books, but mostly it's texts that he scans for you (either literature texts or philosophy and academic discourse on the subject). It's clear the man knows a fair amount of what he's talking about, and that's basically what he shows you during the class. You essentially come to class and he talks for the entire period, with some engagement from the class. If it's a particularly exciting topic there may be more of a back-and-forth dialogue, but I've found that fairly reliably you can go to class and expect to be talked at for the entire time. I know that he says he gives mostly Bs, and that he reserves the As for good work, but I'm not entirely sure how true that is. I got A's in both classes that I took with him, even though I feel my writing in French is not really up to snuff. Regardless, it's not impossible to get an A. I will say it is near impossible to get an A+. I have gotten only a single A+ on an essay, and it was because I based an argument of mine on a Said essay that I had picked up in another class (Black Paris with Brent Edwa…

This class is fucking great. O'Keeffe is funny, engaging, cool to talk to, and hyper-intelligent. I never felt nervous about talking in class and just really enjoyed all the lessons. He's just so knowledgeable on everything. I thought this would be a shitty, boring conversation class that would just help me keep my French going for a semester, but it was interesting and relevant and taught me so much about French culture etc, and improved my writing moreover. You only have one essay due, and it's structured such that you have a paragraph due like once every 2 or 3 weeks, which he corrects and hands back to you: so eventually, by the time you actually hand in the final draft, you just compile the paragraphs and voila, your French is flawless. He also lets you send in as many drafts as you like, which means, again, you can get a really good grade pretty easily. He also gives you, at the beginning of the semester, a "cheat-sheet" that's just a list of things like "That said", "What flows from what has just been said", "Let us therefore consider" etc in really poetic French. You just plug these into your essay with filler words relevant to your actual topic, and you're done. But you learn a lot. You really do. It's the perfect balance between easy and actually helpful: my writing improved tenfold and he taught me how to actually use the subjunctive. Bravo, Brian. 10/10

Hmm.... What to say about O'Keeffe? You see, I honestly can't decide. There's a part of me who wants to bow down to him and say "Teach me all that you know." There's a side of him that is charming, funny, friendly, and very relaxed. It's clear that he is very intelligent. But that isn't all. Out of nowhere he can become condescending, dismissive, elitist, and aggressive. It isn't that Brian doesn't have interesting things to say or doesn't push you to the next level of your own potential (which is what we should all want in a professor), he simply doesn't do a very good job in his delivery, which is to say that his "constructive criticism" often comes off as plain old criticism, served up straight and harsh. This man is a character out of a novel. Read the reviews below. Read all of them. Understand that this is who this man is. Accept it. Move on. Take his class. And whatever he has to say to you, try not to take it personally.

I took Culture of France II with Brian, and I can honestly say that he deserves his silver nugget. He is demeanor in class is intense, well-paced (you won't find yourself scrambling to write notes trying to keep up), yet takes a charming schoolboy-ish interest to any sexual references in the texts we read (of which there were many). Many reviewers commented on the occasional acidic or cutting comments he can make. Having been on the receiving end of such remarks of his, I can also say that either he’s been working on correcting it or PEOPLE NEED TO GET A GRIP. Besides the fact, he is actually genuinely concerned with the development of his student’s writing and critical thinking, and is known to give people lots of extra help outside the classroom, extensions when needed, and even allowing re-edits for papers with below average grades ( if he thinks you deserve another chance). I usually don’t feel the need to write reviews for professors, given my general reaction is “eh at best to most professors out there, but in Brian’s case, the man deserves tenure.