Daniel Swift

Daniel swift is hip and with it (rumored to moonlight as a paparazzi). He knows his stuff and loves to talk about anything literature. Must go to class, papers are moderately easy. Swift puts a lot of emphasis on revision and you can make up bad grades by rewriting.

Daniel's class was the first class I stepped into on my first day here at BC. And what a relief it was! Daniel is charming and adorable with his Brittish accent and skinny jeans. He throws out a lot of quirky phrases like "this thought is massively important." More importantly, he is intellectually honest, direct, and genuinely interested in his students and their progress. Mr. Swift definitely helped my writing, forcing me to cut the crap which is important to learn to do when you start at a school like Barnard. Mr. Swift isn't exactly trying to be your best friend but he is certainly approachable and will remember your name if you see him out and about a semester later. Try and get him if you can. I've heard that Stefan is great for first year English too though.....

Daniel Swift definitely helped my writing-- he really wants you to dig deeper and "push it further." The class is all about close reading-- extremely close reading. This can get really boring sometimes. He encourages discussion but he chooses to focus on somewhat mundane topics. All in all, you could do worse for first year english. He'll be really helpful when you meet with him one-on-one (he's normally available on campus and he responds to emails almost instantly). If anything, the class gives you a fascinating topic of discussion: his orientation. Oh, and the last day of class, he'll tell you how he met Gwyneth Patrow. ("she's quite lovely").

Easy on the eyes, but not on your papers. Facilitates fascinating class discussions but can be a little priggish in the paper disections. That is, if you can decipher his generally illegible comments. A genuinely nice person though. PS- He's British, looks about 16 years old, and definitely wears smaller sized jeans than most of his students. Relevant? Perhaps.

Yep, Daniel Swift is great. Full of information, great at leading class discussions, and endlessly patient. He'll really help you out with the assigned material and with your own writing. Take advantage of his office hours, too-- his one-on-one discussions are as interesting as his class.

reasonable. A couple of 4-5 page papers with rewrites and an 8-10 page paper at the end

Not too much. A couple of essays that you can revise. (But he expects the revisions to be completely different from the original). Reading, but if you don't participate, you don't really need to read the books. One research paper, with revision, due at the end of the course that counts as your final.

reasonable reading, a paper about every month. spend time on the paper to get the most out of the class.