Jonathan Reynolds

While at first I thought Professor Reynolds was a mild-mannered individual, he became increasingly irritable and frazzled as time went on. We were consistently behind on lectures, and while he expected the class to be more forgiving towards him, he was not forgiving towards the students. His grading (as is the case with every art history course I have ever attended) was seemingly-basis as there were little comments and no rubric. Though only good comments could be highlighted in a paper, you would still end up receiving a B on it with no explanation or ability to improve.

This was one of my favorite courses, if not my favorite, I've taken at Barnard. Reynolds seems genuinely interested in, and even affected by, students' views. He is not pretentious but will tell you when you're wrong. His passion for art history, no matter what period, seeps into every discussion. He pushes you to write succinctly and clearly. Not only did this class provide me with both in-depth and broad perspectives of the art historical field, but it also taught me to consolidate information, summarize, and debate with classmates. I also appreciated how he made weekly papers due on Mondays and graded them by class time on Tuesdays; this provided structure and forced us to be prepared for discussion. Reynolds epitomizes the "quirky professor" stereotype in the most charming way possible. He also e-mails you back almost instantly and makes time for office hour meetings.

I took Professor Reynolds' Modern Japanese Architecture just to fulfill a general requirement, and went into the class prepared to pass/fail since it sounded like an intense class with mainly architecture/art history majors--and this class had nothing to do with my major. That said, in my four semesters at Columbia, I can definitively say that this class has been my absolute favorite. This was a class where I actually looked forward to each lecture. Not only is the material incredibly interesting, Reynolds' lectures will keep you interested for the entire hour and fifteen minutes. Sure, you can take a Facebook break every so often, but for basically the entire lecture, he will keep it interesting and keep you focused. His snippets of wry, somewhat self-deprecating humor will make your day, and you will fall in love with this man. His lectures are based not on textbook photos or internet sources, but from buildings that he has photographed himself, that he found fascinating or significant, and will tell you short anecdotes about his visit and experience at the building site. I'm not an architecture major so there isn't much I can say about the class for other architecture students, but all the designs we studied were absolutely gorgeous and its history incredibly rich. From the beginning of the semester to the end, we really do see the evolution of urban Japan from a more tradi…

Professor Reynolds is a really nice guy with a deep enthusiasm for Japanese culture and art, but unfortunately this isn't enough to make him a stimulating professor. He never really asks provocative questions, steers seminar conversations (his usual response to comments is "uh huh") or challenges the class in new or exciting ways. His favorite word is "helpful" and you will hear it used in a variety of ways throughout the semester, ie. "was this reading helpful?" "i thought this image was very helpful.." I believe that he has a lot of experience and knowledge about the subject matter; maybe if he gave his students a little more credit, stopped babying them, and let us bite into each lesson, the class wouldn't just feel like a 4-month-long snooze.

This class covers a lot of material (1000's of years) so there's a lot to know, and because it's an art history class, you're gonna be expected to know a lot of things for the tests. However, Reynolds is a decently engaging lecturer and is definitely passionate about the material. The subject is quite interesting with him at the helm, however, I found the readings quite dull. I did poorly on the midterm and relatively well on the final, despite the fact that I only read for the first 2/3 of the semester. This suggests that you need to study the slides and Reynolds' favorite topics more than you need to know every reading. I was able to pick out what he seemed to think was most important (Isozaki, Maekawa, Todaiji, Katsura just to name a few) without much difficulty

This person simply doesn't know how to teach. Most of the classes were reduced to mediocre student presentations to compensate for the instructor's lack of competence in both her expertise in the field and her English language ability. When she did lecture a bit, she would resort to cliched notions of Zen, tea ceremony, and the misty pagodas that represented Japanese architecture to the orientalists of the prewar period. I think we're way beyond that circa 2003.

weekly one-page responses, final presentation and paper

Professor Reynolds' knowledge of Japan & its culture is SPECTACULAR. That being said, the atmosphere of the class was sluggishly passive. A huge disappointment, considering how expansive the material can be. What startled me was how Professor Reynolds was "too" particular on what he will/ not put on the exams. This was partly due to numerous (and often overlapping) questions raised "too" frequently by the class because the IDs were giving off the wrong impression or something. Anyway, I felt like my curiosity was being stampeded by a mob of rhinoceros as he'd inject, "By the way this will NOT be on your IDs in the exam." Passing the exam isn't the reason I took this course. On the other hand, if you can construct together the bits-an'-pieces from class material to form a good, big picture, the exam should be not a problem at all. Listen closely to try to craft an impression of the major figures, artists, events & techniques so that you could easily personify a new concept. Another thing that bugged me was how monotonous the lectures were. After all, there were readings assigned (and they are Good). Why not delve deeper into class material on behalf of those articles? The slides & oral presentations were far too manifest compared to the discourse going on in the readings; I would have been FAR more intrigued if Professor Reynolds had used them as discussion-starters. He would m…

50-100 pages of reading each week (you should do it, but can totally get away with not doing it until the papers or midterm--it will make lectures all the more interesting though). 1 midterm--mainly IDs and paragraph answers, with several short essays. You will definitely need to devote a lot of time into memorizing (but that's expected of any art history class), but as long as you keep up with the lectures and take in what he is saying, the actual material is not too hard--just historic context mainly. 2 4-5 page papers--one on just the reading and lectures; second one on a building in NYC designed by a Japanese architect. It was either the New Museum or the addition to the MoMA for us. In class final.

He was a great professor - energetic, funny, exciting, knowledgeable, and some times wacky. I could feel his passion for the material as he talked about each artwork, and it really helped me learn the information. His voice is loud and booming, so I found it easy to follow him through lectures. There's a lot of material that he covers, so I found it quite challenging come exam time to learn all of it--title, date, location, background, etc. It's a good class, but there's work a decent amount of work involved.