Carlos Nugent

Standard lithum workload, except for NO MIDTERM! (prof. Nugent explained that everything is covered on the final and that he’d rather have a constructive discussion). Attendance and participation (20%), reading journals based on completion (15%), first argumentative essay (17.5%), second comparative essay (22.5%), study guide on one of the works (10%), final exam (15%)

Workload was pretty light, which is about average for lit hum classes. 1 reading journal presentation + 7 other reading journal discussion posts, 2 essays, final. Follows standard lit hum syllabus with the one addition per semester (I enjoyed his choices).

I really enjoyed Professor Nugent’s discussions. Each class is thoughtfully structured around a larger theme from the text, which we then explore in depth (for ex. “civilization and barbarism” in Gilgamesh or “the literal and the literary” in The Iliad). These discussion circles are truly thought-provoking, and his teaching style creates a comfortable, engaging environment. He never pressures anyone to speak, and he has a unique ability to restate students’ ideas in a sophisticated way that makes everyone feel intelligent and valued. At the start of the semester, he often shared stories about his newborn daughter, which added a warm, human touch to the class - girl dad energy at its best

Nugent is both a fantastic professor and person. His background in racial and ethnic studies brought what I found to be a very unique and interesting perspective to the lit hum readings. He is really approachable and kind. Unfortunately, I have found class discussions to be quite boring---I feel that we never get anywhere. However, I'm not sure if this is a result of bad leadership on the professor's part or the disinterest among students (I find it more likely to be the latter).

It is not to much work as long as you try on the assignments. Its quite nice in my opinion as we don't have a midterm, only a final, participation counts and so does a weekly reading journal however we only have to do 8 of them. I would recommend it.

Good teaching style and the class is interesting. I can tell that he puts a lot of effort into his teaching which is nice to see. He is very nice and always tries to make the discussions we have accessible to everyone.

Approximately spent 2/3 hours per week but grading is pretty good as long as you show effort in class discussions. We had to prepare a study guide for a designated book (with a partner), did weekly discussion posts (presented on one of them) and two papers in class. No midterm.

As a first year student, I didn't know what awaited me in LitHum. To my surprise, it was also Professor Nugent's first class at Columbia. His style consists of discussion based classes where you make a lot of literary connections to modern day problems. In my opinion it was much more enjoyable talking about these books in context to the world we live in rather than doing simple book analysis. The class is overall not too hard and is pretty easy as long as you have a general idea about the book to contribute how it can relate to daily life.