Eric Blanchard

Really not bad. About 50-70 pages of reading per class. Semester-long journal project whereby you submit 10, 550 word short essays relating the concepts to current news, documentaries, events, lectures, etc. Really easy if you do the readings and pay attention in class. Midterm, which has 5 "ID" terms and an essay. Final, which also has 5 "IDs" and two essays.

Unnecessary. Not overwhelming but since the readings are scattered and not particularly interesting, mostly just a waste of time. 2-3 short essays, midterm, and final

I. Love. This. Class. No, seriously. Eric Blanchard is the man. I mean, yes he makes small stupid jokes in class, but everyone laughs and actually enjoys him. i don't see him being disorganized at all; before class, he basically outlines the major points of the class on the board in headings and bullet points and goes through each one clearly. The review for the exams was so comprehensive. Now onto the course material. This class is really incredible. The course material explores the various roles of women across the globe, from the more obvious domestic roles to the not-so-obvious public sphere and warrior roles. The best aspect of the class is that you study things that are severely understudied, material you likely would not encounter in other classes. It also gives you a whole new framework with which to view injustice. Yes, there are a lot of readings and you get out of the class what you put into it, but the work is absolutely nothing even close to unmanageable. You also don't have to do ALL of them in depth, but they really are interesting if this is what you want to study. He also only gives you one of his own writings, which is a rarity. He encourages discussion and debate in class and forces you to think about the concepts. Also, his midterm and final are so clearly defined; he gives you 20 possible IDs that will be on the exam and picks 5. The essay questions are so…

The material for any poll sci intro course is bound to be somewhat dull, but do yourself a favor and don't make it worse by taking the class with Professor Blanchard if you can avoid it. His lectures are mostly him rambling and attempting to make jokes related to International Politics. The slides are eventually posted (with a bunch left out on purpose) near midterm/final time. He also insisted on passing around an attendance sheet before lecture though I'm not sure whether it mattered much or was ever really looked at. He assigns way more readings than necessary and buying the books is pretty much a waste of money. (You will need them for the essays though, so just check them out at the library). The whole course is pretty disorganized, and I finished it feeling like I learned absolutely nothing. The TAs were much better at explaining stuff than he was, so section was actually somewhat useful. Professor Blanchard is also super super vague about essays- how he wants them written, what exactly the question/topic even is, and this applies to essay questions on the midterm and final as well.

There were a sufficient amount of readings that were actually fascinating. I read most of them but not consistently with the schedule. They are the only part of the class that I took away.

Any student who takes Eric Blanchard should be refunded a portion of the tuition they paid that semester. He is, without any doubt, the least prepared, least interesting teacher I have had. He was consistently shocked by his powerpoint whether that meant something was written there that he hadn't remembered was there or a slide was missing or the order was different. He gave the excuse, "Oh sorry, guys, it's because I changed over my powerpoints to my iPad." Funny thing is, the same excuse was given to his class in the fall that my friend took. It can therefore be concluded that he did not take a simple five minutes before class to review his slides in order to know what was on them. The power points themselves were incredibly boring- cluttered with quotes from great thinkers to make him appear learned but lacking content that is actually applicable in life. Such horrible power points were promised to us as pdf's online but were only put up twice in the semester leaving you stressed when your notes were incomplete as a result of him skipping slides when he ran out of time. Papers were perhaps an even more ridiculous experience. The prompts were so ambiguous and convoluted that few people knew what to write. He decreed that no student could meet with their TA about the paper (what is a TA exactly for if not for helping g students?) and no student could go to the writing center…

2 papers, midterm, final (both midterm and final in blue books)

I enjoyed/was interested in the actual IR content of the lectures but felt that it was often presented in a boring, slide-by-slide manner. It's obviously very difficult to conduct an engaging class in a lecture as large as this one, but oftentimes only about half of the students enrolled even showed up! Professor Blanchard himself is clearly very knowledgeable, and it was nice to be able to get his perspective on IR. TAs did all of the grading (rumors were that Blanchard went over everything, though). Loved my TA (Brian Blankenship) but felt that there was some disparity in grading between TAs. My second paper was graded by another TA and the grade was significant lower while the quality was (in my opinion) about the same. Ended with a B in the class- seems to me that the grade you receive will be luck of the draw based on saying the correct things (specific authors on topics) on midterms/finals as well as hitting whatever the particular TA wants to see in the papers. All in all, an important class because of the content, but the grade was frustrating to see at the end, given that I had actually gone to every single lecture unlike many of my classmates. I wouldn't want to do it all over again.

Not horrible -- standard for a PoliSci course. However, the assignments are so vague and graded so harshly, that it seems like an endless abyss of torment.

I come from the inner-city where funding is unavailable and where the misconstrued perception of unteachable students and a dangerous area presides, scaring away top-notch teachers. So I know what shitty teachers are like. I have been in some of the worst classes ever exposed to children. That said, Professor Blanchard is the worst teacher I have ever encountered. The assignments are unclear, the TAs are completely helpless and do a poor job of leading discussion in seminar. I cannot believe how Columbia retains this man.