Carl Wennerlind

Best lecturer ever. Wennerlind is so engaging, and the class is just fascinating overall. Also he was super open to questions and discussions after class and in office hours. Overall, this was my favorite class last semester; I'm usually a STEM person.

Hands down, my favorite course of the semester. Professor Wennerlind knows exactly what he's talking about, and it is truly enjoyable to listen to him lecture. I'd come in even when I was sick, purely because I wouldn't want to miss out. He gave me a lot of insight into Trans-Atlantic relations and I really came away feeling like I had learned something and that it would stick with me. The first half of the semester was an overview of the time period and the set-up for each of the different groups, the merchants, the pirates, and the slaves. It gave context to all the countries involved, from political to economic to religious reasons. The second half of the semester focused on these different groups of people. The most time was spent on the merchants, than a bit less on the slaves, then the least on the pirates. Professor Wennerlind tended to repeat himself a lot, but I think that was merely for emphasis rather than filling up time. There was a heavy workload, with perhaps a hundred pages due per class, but it was a lecture style class, so while doing the readings enriched the lecture, they weren't necessary for your survival in class. There was very little class participation, though Professor Wennerlind would encourage it sometimes, and was very good at answering questions to the best of his ability. There were also three short essays, and one final essay, along with an in-…

Professor Wennerlind is a fairly engaging lecturer. I was able to focus in his class pretty well and he obviously knows and communicates a lot about the topics we cover (especially the early history stuff). He also has a lot of cool/bloody/interesting anecdotes about specific economic developments. However, I had a really hard time getting through the readings -- some were informative and enjoyable, but most were extremely heavy and long. Doing the readings is really not enforced during the semester, but you need to know a lot of details for the exams, so I (and a lot of the other students, I think) ended up reading everything in the span of the 3 days before the exam. Not the most effective way of learning. I'd recommend trying to do more readings during the semester, you'd probably get more out of the course in general.

I would like to start off with noting that when I read the reviews before I wanted to take this class I thought it would be a piece of cake and it was NOT. I loved European history in high school and thought that this class would be interesting and a new take on Euro but that thought was a total fail. While Professor Wennerlind is pleasant to look at, his lectures were disorganized and kind of covered a bunch of things with no uniform guide. He assigned a million readings that were not necessary to do and the TA's SUCKED (try not to get Peter is you take this class). It really should have been an easy class, but I guess Professor Wennerlind knew that people didn't take it so seriously in the past and made sure to make the grading extra difficult. Overall, I was not impressed with this class at all. I came into Columbia wanting to be a history major and this class made me regret ever thinking about majoring in history.

Very fair professor. He's really nice. Holds a review sessions and gives last year's exam as a practice exam. Very nice as well. He really likes applying what he teaches to real life, so it's always good to know the current conditions of the economy for any exam. On the final, he made us read two short article on the economy and then asked us essay questions on them. Go to his office hours and get to know him. He'll remember your name and it matters!! When he knows you and sees that you're a good student, he may grade you in a more lax manner. Overall, good class. The class is much smaller than some intro classes at columbia. I thought this class was much more understandable than the Principles of Econ i took with Brendan O' Flaherty at Columbia.

really very enthusiastic professor. keeps it interesting. he always goes over what he taught in previous class in beginning of class. so if you realized during reading that you didn't get something he'll be more than happy to go over it. he goes at a slow-medium pace so it's easy to follow along. pretty good prof. gives partial credit on exams for just writing down the correct formula ! so make sure you know them !!

This is a pretty easy class. You don't need to do the readings if you go to class. You read Smith, Marx, and Keynes. But Carl loves Marx, so he spends most of the semester talking about Marx...make sure you write what Carl thinks on the papers...he doesn't hide his political views at all. Short papers, only about 4-5 pages each, and they're basically summaries of what the thinkers said. Not a bad class, enjoyable, and Carl's really nice and approachable. Easy A if you write what Carl wants you to write.

This is the best class I've taken at Columbia. The syllabus is incredibly well-designed; each lecture alternates between a pro-capitalist and anti-capitalist author writing during the same era, so you are constantly comparing their philosophies side-by-side. It is comprehensive, covering almost every major economic thinker since the 1600s, and highlighting different facets of capitalism not only as an economic system, but also as a political and social mode of organization. In addition, Prof Wennerlind emphasizes the connections between economic philosophers of different eras, showing exactly how they influenced each other (i.e. how Milton Friedman builds off of Hayek who builds off of Locke and Hume), so by the end of the course I had a deep understanding of the genealogy of modern economic thought. Prof Wennerlind is a gem. His lectures are engaging, and he does a wonderful job breaking down complex readings. I went to his office hours a lot just to discuss course content, and he is super nice guy with tons of insight into anything capitalism-related. Def go to his office hours -- it is good for participation points, but you will also learn a lot!

I was looking for a course that could either fulfill the History or Cultures in Comparison requirements of Barnard's 9 Ways. Admittedly, the title of this class is what first intrigued me, and I'm no history major type person (far from it- I'm a physics major). Also that review where it states that they took this class for two reasons, the latter being to learn cool things about pirates (which you do). I stayed in this course purely because of Professor Wennerlind. He is an amazing lecturer. I will say that it is difficult to write everything he says, so I recorded all of his lectures for this course after the first class. This helps a lot when you are reviewing for the midterms and finals, because he sometimes answers the essay prompts verbatim during his lecture, and points to authors that answer the question as well. Very useful for when you vaguely remember an essay topic and wrote less than perfect notes on a certain day (please date all your notes if you are recording his class, it makes finding information so much easier) and suddenly you have a professor given summary of the topics you should hit from a lecture a month ago you don't remember too well. He is very engaging, and knows little details about this course that is frankly stunning. He gives a lot of reading per week, but he very rarely asks about it in class. He will stop to ask people about ideas and topics du…

I really did not enjoy this class at all. While I guess it was easy in some respects, the entire thing was done on a powerpoint project of which he sped through, explaining very little. In the beginning we repeated things over and over and over until I just found it unnecessary to go to class. I am a huge fan of history, but Professor Wennerlind turned me off to economic history entirely. He isn't very friendly, and not incredibly helpful when you email him. He also is concerned in getting through his lecture, and not as concerned about whether or not the students are following it. He thinks everyone understands what he's saying, and just keeps on going to the next powerpoint page, barely giving you time to copy the notes. I was extremely bored and displeased with this class and found it hard to motivate myself to ateend, as did the rest of the 60 some-odd students of whom 3/4 did not show up except for the midterm and final.