English And Comparative Literature · Columbia University
Take this class! Professor Negron-Muntaner is one of the most knowledgeable professors I've ever had. Class is somewhat disorganized and there are no due dates (she says she will give you due dates if you need them lol), but it does not affect the class at all. We had generally good discussions and very interesting readings (that it seemed a lot of people weren't doing). I ended up learning a lot in this class, and I can say I had fun too.
Took this course having read great reviews about Muntaner. Instead, her TA did all the grading and effectively ruined the class. She wouldn't even look anything over. Stay far, far away.
She is amazing! She can seem pretty intimidating at first but she is very laidback. She is very informative but also sparks great conversation. The work is not incredibly hard but make sure to do the reading.
Francis Negron is phenomenal. Even if you think you don't have an interest in latino lit, you do. She's incredible, fabulous, super-inteligent, and hilarious. She's young, she's an artist, she makes documentaries, she knows famous people, she throws in random facts ("about that time when i was interviewing Selena's brother ..."). Her lit selections for the class are great. It's all current stuff, and feels really new because not much criticism has been written on it yet. It's clear this professor is on the cutting edge of her field.
On the syllabus, it says that you have to complete 3 reflections, a beginning, middle, and terminal evaluation, a final self-exam, a project, and a reading introduction presentation. This seems pretty complicated, and I don't think everyone did all of these. I did complete them (albeit some very late), but In the end, we assign ourselves grade. Overall, I wouldn't worry too much about your grade just do the work.
I quite enjoyed prof. FNM's lectures, she was always extremely insightful and sensitive when discussing issues in class. However, the bulk of this class experience, for me, was ruined by my TA, Chelsey Saunders. Intro to CSER has a mandatory discussion section that meets once a week, but really besides the 2 lectures/week run by prof. FNM, the whole class experience depends on your TA. The TA grades all your weekly reflections, the midterm, the ethnography/interview project, and the final, on top of many other weekly assigned things. Chelsey was honestly a terrible TA. From the very first discussion section, she decided that we, students, would be teaching/running the weekly discussion sections instead of her. She, the TA, who is qualified to teach and studying at Teacher's College, wants us, the students, to be teaching the class that SHE's in charge of? She essentially pawned off her whole job to us! I also don't think this was very helpful us as students as a method of learning, either, since instead of having a qualified, knowledgeable teacher lead discussions we had a bunch of very simple, superficial discussions every week since all of us students leading the discussions were inexperienced and thus couldn't lead very deep discussions. She was also kind of very mean and a bit oppressive, in my opinion, and even once snapped at a student in the middle of his question to te…
It is true !!! Prof. Negron is the best Columbia has to offer. This is one of the few classes in which I felt that the money I paid was all worthed. She is everything one can expect from a Prof. at an Ivy league institution. If you can, take a class with her, she is worth the money , the time and the effort to read and go to class every day. The lady is just great.!!
A take home midterm, an in class final, and a 15 page research paper due at the end of the semester. Go to class, it helps a lot and that's the best part.
I didn't like the disorganized operation of this class. Lectures were somewhat hard to follow, it was difficult to understand the points being made or the relation of each point to the others. Assignments were vague and I was never sure exactly what was expected. Rubrics/guidelines were released less than a week before the due date of the midterm and final papers. Overall content was interesting and I learned a lot. Discussion section was engaging sometimes, other times it was boring. That would depend on your TA and your classmates though. Not hard to do well in this class if you can write good essays.
I loved this professor and the class. She is engaging and keeps the class moving. While there is a large amount of reading, it never felt like a burden. (OK, well, sometimes, but I still did it) She is easy to talk to and interested to hear what the students have to say.