Giulia Ricca

Occasional HW and creative assignments, bi-weekly/tri-weekly papers, some passage ID quizzes, a final project, and a midterm and a final

The assignments were creative pieces of writing meant to reflect and connect more deeply with the works read in class. There was a department-wide final exam and a final project.

I feel I had to spend hardly any time at all on the course in comparison to earlier ones—hey, a net positive, right? Less work. Well, not really, because if the goal is to learn a language, you need to be engaged with it on a near constant basis and be encouraged and motivated to persist with it. These were sorely lacking in the class. The grades that were assigned felt more like participation trophies than a true reflection of my knowledge of the material. I feel I would have just been better off studying the language on my own and seeking out native speakers to practice with.

Prof. Ricca is easily one of the best instructors I've had at Columbia. She makes the material extremely digestible in class with appropriate check-ins for understanding, clarification, and reference to her office hours for further discussion if needed. She's super available and understanding. I will say that if you're consistently late, that will work against your grade and its something she's pretty strict about but, super understanding, makes the content as universal as she can and she's passionate about her work which makes you more enthusiastic about the content.

Professor Giulia is everything you could hope for in a Lit Hum professor. She created a classroom environment that was both intellectually rich and deeply supportive. Her emphasis on creative projects - like rewriting parts of stories or crafting personal responses - helped us engage with the texts in meaningful and personal ways, and genuinely deepened my love for literature. She was also incredibly understanding about workload and deadlines, always balancing academic expectations with empathy. You could tell she cared about us as people, not just students. Her feedback was thoughtful and constructive, and discussions in class always felt dynamic and respectful. I left each class feeling more curious, more reflective, and more confident in my ability to interpret and respond to literature. Truly one of my favorite professors at Columbia so far.

The professor was nice on a surface level so I am hesitant to leave a negative review, but if I'm completely objective, she was simply not effective as a language instructor. In the earlier courses, the professors were very invested in the students, made sure we had assigned material to work on after every class, kept us on our toes during lecture with spoken exercises that everyone was expected to partake in. Everything was very well regimented. This professor unfortunately seemed very bored, spoke to only maybe half of the class, drew out the 2-hour class window with busywork, life anecdotes, and a lengthy film screening drawn out over the semester. There were very few assignments and the ones that were given were little more than an afterthought and the feedback we got, if any, were just quick annotations with no commentary. The lecture slides were a mishmash of exercises quickly thrown together that made later referencing a headache, and there was no official text to reference or learn from. The atmosphere in the class was set early on, and it wasn't one that was conducive to wanting to learn. I get it, teaching the same thing over and over can be a drag, but if you aren’t going to put in the effort, maybe it’s best to throw in the towel and do something else if teaching isn’t really your thing.

Fair and evenly distributed. Second passage ID’s were hard but woke me up for the final.

Focused on classics but had a lot of insight on them.

Pretty standard, readings were a lot sometimes but that’s just lit hum for you. Very fair assignment structure with clearly outline expectations and lots of liberty in them which made it easy to submit work that resonated with the text and myself.

Lit hum is a class where you get what you give to it. Professor Ricca has something unique to offer, at least as compared to other literature classes. She has a profound depth of knowledge regarding classical texts as she is pursuing a phd in literature. Coming from a perspective of lit hum being a focus on more current works, this approach might be unfamiliar at first, but I came to realize is incredibly fruitful. She has a lot of wonderful things to say and is truly passionate about everything she teaches. This class is about broadening your understanding of literature and Professor Ricca excels at that. She is happy to meet with you whenever you need, responds to emails incredibly fast, and is overall a wonderful and kind soul. Never be afraid to ask a question!