Elizabeth Blackmar

Where is her gold nugget?! She is extremely knowledgeable in US History, and I highly recommend anyone interested in American History to take one of her courses. She is also approachable and helpful if you meet with her during office hours.

She’s a phenomenal professor and should have a gold nugget. She ran the seminar a bit differently than most others - instead of letting students lead the discussions, she wrote the questions and directed the seminar. It sounds like a recipe for a professor to blather on but in practice worked extremely well because the quality of the questions wasn’t dependent on the effort of a randomly assigned student. And because she is so passionate about the material, she actually wanted to hear us debate it. People also seemed more prepared week-to-week than in other seminars because there were never presentation weeks where we had to burn ourselves out preparing to lead the discussion. There were weekly courseworks posts, which offered us the chance to ask questions, but I don’t remember anyone being chewed out for a low effort post. Awesome class with an awesome professor - take it!

Having just come out of this class, I can say this is one of the most difficult but rewarding classes I have taken at Columbia. The seminar meets once a week (it's the fall thesis prep course for juniors going abroad in the spring, basically). The first few weeks of the course is spent just reading various types/genres of history-writing and learning how to critique different authors' use of sources, writing styles, and conceptions of historical phenomena. This part of the course is sort of weird because no one really has a handle on the material because everyone's historical specialization is different and the reading load is pretty heavy. But I think I got a fair amount out of it when I wrote my final paper. The rest of the course is preparing your prospectus (a research proposal for your thesis). It's daunting and a ton of work to do on top of weekly reading and responses, which continue throughout the semester. There are various checkpoints along the way though to make sure you are keeping up (topic statement, bibliographies, primary source analysis, etc.) Professor Blackmar is, like the class, both intimidating and amazing. I have never met a professor (let alone an academic bigshot) sit down with you for over an hour to help you. Her factual knowledge is awe-inspiring and she challenges you to think critically in a way few professors at Columbia have. That said, you need…

This class was the most traumatic experience of the past three years of my college career. The workload was rediculous, in addition to being rediculously boring. Reading 250 pages of absolute crap will really take a toll on you. Perhaps I am being too harsh, but everyone who I have spoken to about this class agrees that they spent all time associated with that class in a total daze. The lectures were so abstract and confusing that the TA's admitted that half the time they had no idea what was going on either. The readings were no less abstact and pretty much as confusing and useless. We read a couple of pretty good books, but spare yourself the pain and go read them on your own. The papers consisted of the TA's busting your balls and the final gave you the fun task of putting a sememster's worth of incoherent lecture and readings that had nothign to do with one another into some sort of coherent argument. I wish that I was just an angry person without any backing, but if you ask anyone who took the class, they will agree...Just thinking about the class brings me to a panic. Also, the grading was insane. I don't think one person in my section (perhaps the whole class) got an A or an A-, or so it would seem from the multitudes of history majors who I took the class with. We pretty much hypothesized that whether you did none of the work or spent 30 hours a week toiling over the t…

Professor Blackmar is stunningly brilliant, both in her knowledge of the coursework but also of, more broadly, American history. Whenever a question is asked during one of her lectures, Professor Blackmar not only answers the question, but places the question within its historical context, bringing in crucial details that paint a vivid picture of the human side of the history. I think she's taught this course a few times before (she's referenced adding/removing works from the syllabus), and it shows through the relevance of the materials which we read. I've only had one book where I didn't understand exactly why we were reading it. The texts range from academic essays to easy-to-read biographies. They are the seed of discussion from which she branches off - sometimes, so much so that we don't cover all the material we need to during lecture. We've been kept ten minutes after class because she needs to finish her...argumentative storytelling (I don't mind this, because I could listen to her for hours, but you might)? I use that phrase because she very much grapples with sources and seeks to absorb and analyze the material, just as a student would. Her lectures are basically a 75-minute monologue, broken up a few times to take questions. She uses minimal visual aids, relying not on a powerpoint but a very detailed outline to keep her on track. Keep these outlines, because they a…

I learned a wide knowledge base into the world of the making of our built environment in America. It was extremely interesting and Blackmar is an excellent lecturer with vast knowledge in her field. I learned about irrigation, consumerism, Taylorism, modernism, roads, landscape architecture, parking lots, tourism, and how to identify features of the built environment through our Scavenger Hunt. Blackmar is absolutely brillant. That said-- the lectures will be some of the best you've heard. She is engaging and frequently asks questions of the class. She makes connections that you wouldn't have thought of previously. She is even giving us feedback on our final paper. She offered office hours every week and cancelled class one time in order to meet with all of us that desired to meet with her on our final papers. A great professor! Feel lucky w/ Blackmar. I learned so much especially through my research paper and Scavenger Hunt. The hunt facilitated my knowledge of the course through my own discovery of the environment around me. The lecture slides were especially helpful in making connections and taking notes post-class period. They provided a comprehensive review! I loved this class and I would recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about the world around them. It made me a non-passive observer. She is deserving of her silver nugget.

This is a brilliantly organized seminar. The readings represent different subjects, eras, and approaches to constructing history. Prof. Blackmar is a genius and the nicest professor I have had at Columbia. If she is teaching a course on the history of the Albany, New York phonebook, take it. She has the ability to make any subject interesting.

This class is really far too sophisticated to be taught at the undergraduate level, or at least the 3000 level. Blackmar is brilliant, and if ever you should have the chance to take a class with her, jump at it. Just be sure it is not this one. The reading list was VERY heavy, but fabulous. She is the first historian thanked in many of the acknowledgments at the beginning of several of the texts, so she has a firm grasp on many of the concepts here. Problem is, they are all disparate and markedly distinct concepts, so in trying to synthesize them into a coherent final examination (in which you had to incorporate 7 of the readings), frustration abounds. Furthermore, I am utterly baffled at how a 19th c. history course is taught at the UNDERGRADUATE level (!)with not a mention of the Civil War! Blackmar, hear this: your lectures were inspirational and listening to you, as an academician, take what seemed like personal responsiblity for the utterly incomprehensible election results is a moment that I will forever be humbled by. I attended each and every lecture, hoping that I would begin to believe what you believed about this course. Please go back to the drawing board and drum up some more tangible themes before teaching the course again.

Substantial amount of reading, as with most humanities courses

Professor Blackmar truly cares about her students. She is more than willing to meet one on one to work on papers etc. and actually reads EACH of her students papers and gives extensive comments! Blackmar met with me several times to work on my research paper (the first history paper I had written in college) and each time we met for at least an hour. She even met with me 3 times in one week. All of this and she is brilliant and super accomplished. In addition to being great one on one, Blackmar is a truly insightful lecturer. In fact, I often felt I couldn't write fast enough in lecture because everything she said was so interesting. This was my first history class at Columbia, the class that convinced me to change my major to history! A great class for anyone interested in the built environment and a unique way to study U.S. history. Its a lot of reading (not all of which is amazing) but totally worth it!