Cassie Fennell

Very reasonable for all of her classes. She is very open to extensions if necessary. Do not let her classes be a sources of stress for you, she does not want that. A very fair and holistic grader.

Cassie is sweet as pie when you meet her, which is veeeeery deceiving because she assigns an insane and unrealistic amount of reading, even for a 4-unit course, grades very subjectively and unfairly. There are 5 response papers that are 1 single-spaced page each, which is reasonable. The midterm was in-class and it was all essay format. She gives you feedback on your midterm to help you better understand the concepts and fill in the gaps between your response and what she was looking for. There are also in-class presentations; she gives everyone the syllabus and tells everyone to pick which week they want to present the material and facilitate class discussion which is excellent in allowing you to practice presenting and facilitating discussion. It's also very helpful in engaging the material. The final is take home and like the midterm, is deceivingly simple. You take away a great deal of knowledge from the course, but be warned that it is veeeeeery difficult to get an A in this class.

I've taken three classes with Cassie (1 lecture and 2 seminars) and she is definitely on my top 3 list of favorite professors at Columbia. She is extremely dedicated, understanding, challenging, and accessible. One of the things that I really appreciate about Cassie is that she always urges us and pushes us to articulate our ideas and thoughts with more simplicity and clarity (while at the same time pushing us to make our preliminary thoughts more complete), as opposed to enshrouding them in academic jargon. She considers this a really important skill to have considering that many of us want to climb down the ivy tower that Columbia students often get stuck in, for the sake of helping people. Cassie is also a very positive and encouraging professor and always makes it a point to mark your abilities and groundbreaking thoughts when they present itself. She always takes a minute after class to tell you about how well you did on the individual presentation, which is really sweet. She is not traditional in her teaching style, often allowing students to explore different venues of expression in the final project for her seminars, whether it is an essay, video, podcast, etc. Also, Cassie is not the type of professor to force you to participate all the time or call on you. I always felt comfortable as someone who tends to listen more in class than speak, which is not always the case…

One article per class, take home midterm and final. Very do-able! Even for first semester freshmen, I'd say.

This class was pretty good, but was disappointing to me in that it did not bring Anthropology to life for me as I was deciding whether or not to major in it. Every class is spent by Professor Fennel beating into the students the argument of each reading for the day (which is light and very reasonable, by the way) with little room for interpretation or expansion into other interesting areas not covered into the readings. I found it to be monotonous and not an engaging approach to anthropology - I didn't just want to learn every facet of the author's argument with little expansion on that as she sternly, yet considerately, as she really wanted us to learn, articulates what the author meant. That being said, she is clearly a wonderful person and very committed to teaching. If she fits into your schedule and you want to take this class, it's not a bad choice given the sincerity of the teaching and very reasonable workload.

Light readings that were reasonable. we never even had to read a full book - only a few chapters. the midterm was take-home - 2 super short essays and she gives you 2-3 days. final was the same thing, just a little longer, and they ask you to be creative. for both take-home midterm and finals grading is fair. also there's one "participant observation mini-ethnography" you have to do. it's short (5 pages, and super easy to write. it's almost like a creative writing exercise)

Fennell is such a good lecturer - all of these bad reviews are clearly outdated. She is full of energy, her lectures are extremely engaging, she thoroughly goes over the readings (many many many times...), telling you what points to understand, what is important etc. For concepts she even does demonstrations in class - uses students and TA's to demonstrate cultural differences and things of that sort. She seems to be strict on the first day or two, but it doesn't take long to realize she really wants everyone to do well and to understand the material. Take this class with her! the class itself was amazing too - the concepts are very interesting, and the readings (though dry) are made very interesting when Fennell goes over them in class.

take home midterm and final. 2 essays for each, and there is a strict word limit. readings are short and engaging, and you don't even have to do them, really, since you can read the material/find quotes when you are writing the essays anyway.

Fennell is a very good professor. Do take this class with her, it's far easier than this class with the other profs. she is good at lecturing, though she talks a bit fast and can be repetitive. i think this is a good thing though, cuz you really get to know what's important. You don't need to do the readings since she summarizes them in class and they are also gone over in section. but they are all very interesting, so i recommend you read them. Fennell is intelligent and nice, she is thoroughly engaging too. take this class!

A lot of dense reading. A film response, a thick description in which you describe a scene somewhere for two hours, and a kinship diagram. Take home mid-term and final consisting several essay questions with strict word limits.