Jennie Kassanoff

Professor Kassanoff is one of the most brilliant professors I've ever studied with. The connections and ideas she explored were extremely unique, but her arguments were all extremely strong. She encouraged everyone to participate in class, though she makes it clear whose ideas are better than others. She can come off as intimidating but she is actually super helpful in her office hours, and I learned so much about writing and research under her guidance. I recommend everyone visit her as much as possible, but her office hours fill up quickly. There is an obscenely long three-hour sit-down final, which is crazy for an English class.

DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS I was recommended Prof. Kassanoff but unfortunately cannot say I would recommend her class to anyone. This class was a huge headache for me (I'm an English Major btw) and I ended up requesting a P/D/F for peace of mind. Not only do we have to read a novel/week (the amount of novels we """read""" is insane, even for a literature course), post twice a week, and write two essays (one 2-4 pages long, the other 5-7 pages long and comparative) but we also need to submit the drafts for Writing Fellows (worth 2.5% of our grade for some weird reason) AND have a long ass final with 2 essays in it. Again, the amount of work is insane! Plus, I truly felt like the lectures started becoming more and more far-fetched with time. We rarely truly stayed faithful to the novels and Prof. Kassanoff would constantly spend most of the lectures reading and analyzing some random historical quote and giving us history lessons instead of actually close reading the texts. My notes are full of "eye roll" notes because I couldn't stand it anymore. The submission to the Writing Fellows was simply a waste of time, since none of the notes my writing fellow gave me were ever similar to the feedback I got from the grader (which is not Prof. Kassanoff btw). I feel like this class was a waste of my time and a 3-hour final at 4pm 2 days before Christmas' Eve did not help me like it any bette…

Jennie Kassanoff's American Literature class is mind blowing. She draw's connections form the texts that wouldn't conventionally be thought of, and she's brilliant at incorporating secondary reading analysis into her lectures. She's highly engaging, funny, and very open at office hours - she helped me restructure my final paper, and was always available. Her class is very well structured, and will please anyone who's looking for an engaging and exciting English class at Barnard.

I could just slap the girls in my class who didn't spend more time on their course evaluations. Prof. Kassanoff is a fantastic, enthusiastic teacher who thrives on class discussion and makes every book seem exciting, whether beforehand or in retrospect. Her comments on papers are thorough and helpful, making rewrites both a learning and enjoyable experience.

i love jennie kassanoff. so much. every time i walked out of her class my mind was blown. i had terrible english education in HS and this class makes me understand why people want to be english majors. i kind of expected the class to be boring but it's so not at all. she's a great lecturer, values in class participation so there was a lot of discussion, and just generally hosts a great class.

Professor Kassanoff is amazing! Her lectures were fascinating and she works very hard to involve the class in discussion as well. Although it was fast paced and not easy, the class itself was very rewarding. Professor Kassanoff is definitely one of the smartest people that I've ever met. Some of the books we read I truly hated. However, her ability to contextualize the readings through a historical perspective was amazing. I don't even care that I wasted a billion hours reading Moby-Dick because of how much I learned this semester. Professor Kassanoff is also very encouraging to have students utilize office hours. You can tell that she really wants her students to succeed. She's a great professor and if you are looking for an English class to take, I'd definitely recommend this one.

I really enjoyed this class. The lectures were always very interesting and Kassanoff always brought in very insightful points into the readings. The readings were also very fun to read. I really didn't mind reading for this class at all. Plus, its very important to read so you can participate in class. I really liked the format of the course too. There were 2 short 3-5 page papers (you pick on which book you'll write about on the first week), 1 creative midterm, 1 out of the house 2-3 page paper, plus a final. Since the papers were sort, it really gave me a chance to improve my writing more closely. After the first paper, I found out what I need to improve on and what kind of a grader Kassanoff is. She's a tough grader, but also fair and clear on explaining what she wants from you. Also, the choice of paper topics is up to you, and the midterm and out of the house paper lets you be very creative. I liked having so many choices and not having my whole grade focused on only 1 or 2 big papers. Again, the class was hard but I ended up doing alright (not great, not bad) and I'm a science major and this was my first english course since first year english. Take this class if you can. It's been my favorite class here.

This class was a waste of my time. Professor Kassanoff, though she may be affable and pleasant, was little more than a source of constant aggravation. I'm an English major, and I've taken a lot of these classes and had a lot of terrible teachers, but never one that was terrible in quite the way she was. She combines idiotic assignments with daft analysis, and the end result is that I can honestly say that I learned nothing in this class. Her assignments were baffling: one paper, combining literary and historical analysis. This on its own is a normal, conventional project. Nothing new there. Except she, for some reason, has taken into her head that because this is an "American Studies" class, that she is erecting some blossomy new paradigm with this "hybrid" paper. She conceives that none of us have ever undertaken such a radical assignment, and accordingly, assigns a bewildering series of drafts, annotated bibliographies, prospectuses, drafts of annotated bibliographies and prospectuses, and meetings with Barnard writing fellows. To a one, these satellite assignments were a waste of time, and contributed not in the slightest to my essay--mostly because half of them were to be handed in before we'd finished the third book. We didn't know what the other texts held; how did she expect us to know what historical phenomenon we wanted to focus on? In general, her methods are infanti…

I love Professor Kassenoff! She is one of the smartest, wittiest women I've met. Kassenoff is the kind of professor who makes you want to work hard. She's not the warmest person - meeting her in office hours is intimidating yet extremely helpful - but she really knows her stuff. She expects everyone to participate, but if you are a little shy about speaking/reading in class she is understanding and you can participate more on the online forum. Kassenoff has been my favorite professor so far. Take her class!!

While I think it's irrefutable that Kassanoff is both intelligent and at times highly entertaining, I have to admit that I was less than satisfied with the direction of this class. Close historical analysis of a text is all well and good, but beware of the overly analytical tactics of Kassanoff as well as the thirty five English majors falling all over themselves to impress her in class.