Georgette Fleischer

As an exchange student from Australia, I was thoroughly impressed with this course and Ms Fleischer. It was engaging at all times, and Ms Fleischer was able to always facilitate class discussion, bouncing ideas off each of us present in the room. She would also scour her many eclectic sources of information to provide the class content with context and encourage fresh perspectives. We went through many of the most important literary thinkers of the era, from Conrad, to Proust, Woolf, Yeats and Eliot. The variety of texts kept things fresh, from Gertrude Stein's Poetry to even a Charlie Chaplin film, and the assigned readings were never difficult to get through. Unquestionably the greatest aspect of this class was the discussions led by Ms Fleischer, who has a knack for getting her students to really engage critically with the texts, and is always so supportive and open to hearing everyone's contributions. This class always felt like a very involved learning experience, in that it was more so a group discussion than a situation in which the students are being lectured by a teacher. She would go out of her way to provide the students with any extra help if needed, and always made useful recommendations for readings beyond the prescribed texts. All in all, the class was always engaging, never too difficult, although always intellectually stimulating, and provided me with an excel…

So this class was pretty much hell on earth, to be honest. It sucks because the material was actually pretty interesting but the professor was just not the best. I know this has been said before on other reviews for Fleischer but I got As on most of my essays in high school and my first two essays (out of three) I got Cs. I'm fighting for a B in the class which is just not where I want to be my first semester of college. The prof gives weird feedback and hates passive verbs (seriously they are her enemy) but when I go to her office hours she just asks me a bunch of questions about my work and doesn't answer my questions. She's actually pretty nice during class time but then I keep getting these horrible grades and not improving. It's very frustrating. I just feel like she hasn't taught me how to write better, which defeats the purpose of first year writing.

Professor Fleischer was one of the worst professors I've ever had. She waxes at length about irrelevant topics, runs class overtime, dismisses intelligent student comments in favor of her own views, grades absolutely unfairly and frankly dresses inappropriately. The best way to succeed in her class is to agree with/expand on her own professed ideas and take into account every one of her scrawled comments on your papers. Worry about grammar more than you have ever worried about it: your grade is primarily dependent on your sentence structure. Participate in discussion. Her comments on papers can sometimes be helpful and she certainly forces you to reexamine your writing; that being said, she doesn't read final drafts of papers in a fair-minded or intelligent way.

I have to disagree with most of what has been written about Professor Fleischer. The one true piece is that she does want you to agree with her and is not always the MOST open to other opinions, but I found that the real issue is that, if you have do have other opinions, she is happy to acknowledge them as long as you back them up. In papers, for example, she is happy to read opinions other than her own as long as you clearly cite the text and do a "close reading," pulling your opinions from the text itself and not from something more abstract. In class, she is delightful - facilitates a really interesting discussion, and is clearly quite brilliant herself. She was very receptive to meeting outside of class, and is an incredibly kind and smart woman. It took me a few weeks to get a handle on what she wanted, but i found (happily) that it was not an issue of agreeing with her, but rather backing up my own assertions with concrete evidence. She is a hard professor, but I really enjoyed her class and would definitely take another one if offered. Hope this helps!

Prof. Fleischer is intelligent and seemed to be engaged in the works she was teaching. She has her own point of view and will voice it, but this does not mean that she opposes all views unlike her own. You can voice your own opinion and she will respect you if your point is supported through the text even if your opinion is not the same as her own. Unfortunately, some people in class try to throw back at her exactly what she says and this makes for some redundant discussion. As long as you read most of the assigned texts and come up with interesting theses for your papers, you'll do fine.

Fleischer is one of my favorite professors at Columbia and I'm sorry to say she is part-time so she cannot be my English academic advisor. I am appalled at the other students' reviews. For the entire semester she was very kind, open- minded, receptive, knowledgeable and interesting. Class discussions were thought-provoking and her comments on papers were always constructive. I looked forward to class every week and the readings she chose were fantastic. She grades fairly and is always open to extensions as long as you ask ahead of time. I loved my experience in her class.

I did not listen to the culpa reviews on this prof when I first read them. I thought everyone was being melodramatic and exaggerating about how much they hated Prof. Fleischer. Believe me, every negative word ever said about her is true. I will not repeat all of things that others have already said, but if you end up in her class do anything in your power to switch out. Not only is she a cruel, egotistical, and self righteous person, but I have not learned anything in her class on top of it! I have always wanted to be a writer and English has always been my favorite subject and I do NOT like prof Fleischer.

I too was aghast early on in the semester. YEs she was unapproachable, rude and condescending. BTW ,this describes quite a few of the prof's . However, it's no diminishing returns here. Put in the work, engage in class (imp.) and show up at her office hrs once in a while and you'll 1- learn something 2- wind up w/ a decent grade. Once you get to know her she is quite a nice person and you could do much worse

Unless you are a professional brown-noser or ego-stroker, do not think you can get a fair grade from this woman. I honestly don't know how she is still teaching. I wish someone had warned me about her when I took her class freshman year - she's absolutely horrid. Once seen grading papers on Low steps about 5 min. before class. I think almost everyone in my class complained to the dept. about her, but somehow she's still around, so watch out.

At some point during the semester Fleischer's elegance faded and I realized she knew little about literature other than things she read. When her arguments were clearly refuted, she cited irrelevant evidence to try to bolster them. Basically she wants you to parrot the opinions of the critics she's been told are good.