Ellen Morris

I took this class like a year ago and am still lowk pissed about it, since I know this class could have been so much more and if I could have gotten into another professor's class, I would have done so. She gave us a shit ton of readings, that were completely useless since I stopped reading a month in when I realized it was useless and was still able to participate in discussion, doesn't discuss the history and makes us just find out by reading, SHE DIDNT READ THE READINGS BEFORE THE CLASS SHE WAS READING THEM WITH US so she couldn't properly realize they were kinda dumb; instead of playing two games we spent the first half of the class just slugging through useless setting building, which quite frankly we had the knolwedge to start by like class 3. I'm still mad about it

I took this class Fall 2024 and LOVED it. Professor Morris is a great lecturer, but this class was so much more than a "lecture course." We went on three museum trips (two as a class, one on our own). You do a lot of research into specific objects in the museums you visit, which is so fun, and adds an art history component to this course. Not only did I learn about Ancient Egypt, I also learned about the vibrant, nuanced, and fascinating field of Egyptology. I would recommend this course to anyone interested in the ancient world! Also, the workload is really not too bad. It's listed as 4 credits for the three museum visits, but the workload is about equivalent to a 3 credit 3000 level course.

Professor Morris is amazing. She encourages a lot of class participation/enthusiasm for the game. For example, she suggests that students wear costumes during their performance of a play by Aristophanes and enjoys taking pictures of class performances and posting them on the Canvas. She has a very warm, friendly, and approachable personality. This class devoted the first few months to reading about the Peloponnesian War and the final month to playing the "Reacting to the Past" game, where each student embraced the role of a historical Athenian in the Peloponnesian War. There are 6 "Assembly" game sessions where you debate one pre-set topic (e.g. granting the vote to metics, exiling Socrates, etc) and any additional agenda items added by your classmates. We read the entirety of the Threshold of Democracy (game manual, quickly read at the start of the course), The Last of the Wine (primary text, read throughout the course), two plays by Aristophanes, and a selection of primary sources compiled on a google doc. Overall, I thought this class was pretty fun! I strongly recommend it for student interested in developing their public speaking or performative skills. Make sure you can read long primary sources to understand the gist of Athenian battles/debates and glean historical events from the Last of the Wine (historical fiction romance book), or you will be lost during class discu…

BEST CLASS I HAVE EVER TAKEN!!! The material covered in readings and discussions is always fascinating, the readings are a bit long and dense though. But totally worth the amazing class discussions. Essentially this class felt like the equivalent of watching a mind blowing movie or Black Mirror episode and then getting to discuss it and go off on super interesting tangents with an entire group of smart and interesting people, every single class. Sometimes this actually means watching movies like Inception and The Matrix. My only criticism is that I don't think Professor Morris' feedback on essays was helpful at all. I really enjoyed writing my first draft every time because the material was really cool to write about, however always dreaded the revision in which you have to make edits according to her arbitrary preferences. By the end of this class you have a ton of knowledge on alternate states of consciousness and if you're into questioning reality and all that cool stuff you will have endless questions and thoughts and love this. Also a super cool thing that happened was that I would start having vivid dreams that relating to dreaming patterns we had learned about. People constantly brought up visions, religious experiences, psychotic experiences, drug trips etc that related and it was all mind-blowing.

Professor Morris is one of the most understanding professors I have had the opportunity to meet. The class is pretty straight forward and organized too. She uploads all of the reading material to Courseworks (yay no book) under folders with labeled due dates. Keep in mind they're suggested reading for the lecture. Her teaching style is very seminar/lecture -esque. Questions are always welcome, but she speaks the entire time with an accompanying powerpoint. She speaks fast, and about key points that are not on her powerpoint. Either write quickly or remember everything. The midterm and final are both essay based. They're super easy if you prep and attend class. She gives 5-6 prompts a week before, and 3-4 of the questions are word for word. There are also extra credit opportunities, so you have to really try to fail her class. Midterm, final and class project are the only things that are actually graded (besides the recitation grade) This class is the only one this semester that I genuinely looked forward to going to. I got there early and I sat in the front - two things I almost never do.

Professor Morris teaches this course much differently than most professors. We have a lot of readings, many of which don't feel related to the course and games. We also had to take notes on these readings in our "Citizens Dossier", but we never actually ended up using these as she said we would. Professor Morris seems a bit disorganized and often assigns things she herself has never read, and will only look at them the night before. We frequently run out of class time to complete our discussions or games. However, with all this said, Professor Morris is an incredibly nice person who cares about every student, just not a great professor. Additionally, I found the readings to be boring, repetitive, and highly historical (as in they language makes very little sense), largely centering on men who talk about how great they are and how their armies will conquer everyone and everything. I didn't find this class to be nearly as fun as advertised. I would to take another professor's section of this course if you're interested in it as I've heard wonderful things from other sections.

I took Professor Morris's Identity and Society in Ancient Egypt class and it was a wonderful experience! I highly recommend the class based not only on the material (which was fascinating), but also because Professor Morris is one of those terrific teachers who truly love teaching their subject. She is an absolute delight to learn from and presents the material is a very organized and thorough manner. I had never taken an Egyptology course before this class, but it didn't negatively affect me because Professor Morris presents a well-rounded history of ancient Egypt that explained both basic historical events and wider reaching societal customs including important cultural moments and ideas. I would absolutely recommend this class to anyone, whether interested specifically in Egyptian history or not, as it is a well taught class about an incredibly interesting subject.

Professor Morris is pretty down to earth, very approachable and welcoming when you visit her in office hours. She brought chocolate which she passed around during the midterm and final. The readings were light and consistent for this course, not too bad. I have to admit though that this was one of the driest courses I have ever taken. The lectures consist of you going from site to site, talking about what has been unearthed there and a few ideas concerning its use at the time. I had a friend who was going to visit Egypt so he was doing research of his own on places to visit and he would ask me about them to see what I had learned from class and almost always they were places we had not discussed in lecture. This is not a course for the academic tourist, rather its seems to be geared towards those students who are really very interested in archaeology and getting into the details of the lives of the people instead of large impressive monuments. I really wanted to learn more about the pyramids which are so unbelievable in the manner in which they were constructed that I was hoping to spend quite a bit of time on that but, alas, we breezed through them in half a class during the first few weeks. At the end of the day I don't really feel like I learned much from this course which will be useful going forward, I do feel like I learned a lot of things that would be useful if I were…

Ellen is one of the most wonderful professors I have met so far at Barnard. Taking this class during my first semester of college was a fantastic decision to make, since Ellen is incredibly encouraging, so participating in class discussions was never daunting (unlike some of the other classes I have since taken). She sometimes directs the conversation to certain people if they haven't said anything yet but is never too pushy, and also told us at the beginning of the semester that if we found it difficult to speak in class to talk to her privately so that she can work with us individually and perhaps make some accommodations for our participation grade. Additionally, her anecdotes can be really funny, and she brings a really positive vibe to the classroom. Some readings can be incredibly long and heavy, as another review mentioned, but as long as you read enough of it to make some insightful comments in class and pay attention to the discussion, you should be fine. During one-on-one meetings, Ellen was always very helpful and made very specific suggested improvements, which certainly helped me to improve the quality of my papers and writing in general. I highly recommend this class!

She’s nice. Accommodating if you are missing class and pretty lenient. It’s a pass/fail class though and it feels like one. The only thing is she’s constantly asking people to put their computers and devices away but the issue is we’re also supposed to compile our notes from readings into a google doc and thus she doesn’t give us the ability to access them during our discussions?? It’d very annoying in that sense. She also tries to drive our discussions in a certain direction rather than allowing us to freely give each other our opinions and build on one another. The class itself had a ton of potential to be super interesting with the gameplay and characters, but it falls flat because she’s kind of all over the place.