Ellen Baker

This review in a nutshell: "When it comes to Baker, do yourself a favor: DON'T TAKE HER!" This class was so painstaking for what feels like so little gain... Granted, Baker was a nice person and she was very intelligent, friendly, and obviously interested and highly informed about women's issues... but this class was mostly a drag. The expectations on assignments were ambiguous--I don't think anybody quite figured out how to write an "abstract" of an article, something that sounds simple but you wouldn't believe how confusing Baker will make it. Everybody ended up doing something different and I still don't know what Baker wanted from us even though we wrote about 3 abstracts this semester. Another part of the problem is that Baker only returned two (harshly graded) assignments in the beginning of the semester (a summary and an abstract)... and then never gave anything else back with feedback/grades until about a week before the class was over. So we never had a clue about how we were doing in the class, no idea of how/what to improve, and barely an idea of how to write the "abstract"... because the one abstract she did return with a grade was nitpicked to death over the smallest minutiae and had little feedback of any real substance on it. The packet of papers she turned back a week before the class was over was the same deal—Baker will mark every tiny grammatical error unti…

A great professor that will keep you engaged in lecture even at 9 in the morning, not to mention funny and enthusiastically helpful. Her office hours were the best I've gone to at Columbia. The course itself has such a wide range of material that most people will find at least a third of it utterly-to-mildly boring, but Professor Baker's contextualization of every bit of info given makes the boring stretches well worth it.

Professor Baker managed to keep the class interesting, while keeping all of us awake despite the class beginning at 9:10am! Professor Baker is awesome. She remained approachable, composed, and pleasant despite the TA strike which undoubtedly bogged her down with grading all of the papers, finals, and revisions from a class large enough to require 3 TA's! I highly reccommend History of the American West and professor Baker particularly. As for the TA's, check Culpa, and choose your section wisely !

I completely disagree with the above review. Professor Baker is intelligent, committed, and understanding. Although she might not be the most inspiring teacher I've ever had, I walk out of her CC class with a firm grasp of the material and memories of some great discussions. Baker's flaw, if anything, is that she is not active enough in steering class discussions and will often hold herself back from shooting down students' opinions, even when they are, in all fairness, complete bullshit. That's a small nit to pick, though, and if you draw Baker for CC you can expect a solid grounding in the texts and an enjoyable trip through the canon. One more thing to know about Baker: never, ever crack a Barnard joke in class. She'll take it badly.

This course covers working conditions, culture, union and political struggles... it is a basic synthesis of the experiences of working class men and women (there's quite a bit on women!) from 1880-2000. I learned a ton. Baker is extremely approachable, and sooo nice! Very smart, too. Her lectures are very easy to follow. I would reccomend the course to anyone.

The class is defnitely informative, though the overall structure could be improved upon. In the lectures, she basically gave an introduction and outline to the topics, and left the rest to us, which sometimes felt like a lot of holes to deal with. Material was also sometimes dry for a 9 am class, though anything would seem dry that early in the morning. However, I would still recommend the class. Baker is very helpful and encouraged everyone to visit her during office hours, which you should definitely take her up on. Greatest word of caution that must be reiterated: in the words of the previous reviewer, choose you TA wisely, because it can completely ruin your experience.

Term Paper, Optional Final Paper, Medium - Heavy Reading (But Good Stuff!)

Among the most terrible experiences in my Columbia career. She seemed to have little grasp of the material and never had her own point of view of the texts read. Taking cc with her really made me doubt the validity of the core.

If you plan on majoring in U.S. history or American studies, this course is absolutely seminal, a "must have" for the understanding of this country's past and development. However, if the title doesn't sound interesting to you and you're not a U.S. scholar, stay away. Baker's lectures are solid, fact-filled, and energetic enough to keep you awake even at 9 am. The textbook is absolutely worthless, but Baker makes up for it with the primary source reader she compiled especially for you, which is fascinating. Depending on your TA, it's possible that you will have lots of fun in the mandatory weekly section which mainly consists of discussion of those primary source readings.

Two papers, Midterm, Final, and class participation grade (she's a bit of an attendence nazi).