Judith Russell

Great professor!! A lot of her praise is merited. However, she has a policy where she only gives out five A's in a seminar, and it's fully based upon your final paper performance...

This was a great class. I learned so much about political theory and its practice in American politics. I loved Prof. Russell, and I don't think she's disorganized at all. There's a huge value to her madness. I would suggest typing your notes for this class, though if you are to keep up and keep everything organized. Russell truly engages you with the major ideas and concepts and makes it so easy to comprehend. If you think you know American politics, you don't until you take this class. There's a lot of reading, but it's very valuable, especially the textbook with snippets from major political science works. It integrates arguments nicely with class lectures. You can speed read the other textbook and take down key terms, especially for the ID section on the midterm and final. Otherwise, you'll get the bulk of what you need from Prof. Russell. My TA was also great. His name was Steven White and he efficiently helped us to understand the main points of the weekly readings. Overall this class was great and I did really well.TBH I actually fell asleep a couple times during the final because I was so sleep deprived from finals week, but it appears I killed the final. Take this class.

Take this class. I was resisting the class from the moment Russell started talking but I came to enjoy it anyway. Professor Russell's lectures are very tangential & make no sense & she comes off as very arrogant. However, outside of class, she is one of the nicest & most caring professors I have ever had. I was able to talk to her several times about my research paper & she actually seemed interested & willing to help. She even came up to me one day before class & asked me how it was going. The workload is very doable. The reading is the lightest of any polsci class I have had and you can easily do it all right before the midterm paper & final exam. The midterm is a little annoying because it is 2 5 page essays on the reading that she expects back in a week after handing them out. However, I had no problem getting it done while working on them on & off for 2 weekdays in between stuff for other classes. The paper is no big deal: 7-10 pages of research on anything you want that has anything to do with the class. You have plenty of room to be creative. The final seemed very intimidating because of the study sheet that had about 100 random terms that usually did not come from the lectures (even though Russell swore they all did) & often garnered only a passing mention in the reading if that. However, the exam did not seem to be taken from this list for the most part & you can do w…

She is a good teacher who assumes her students remembered what they were taught in High School. I've seen some students look frustrated when she references, for example, the first article of the United States Constitution. She assumes they know what it is, and if they don't know, they accuse her of being a bad teacher. At Columbia however, you're supposed to be smarter than the average 12 year-old before you step into the classroom.

I love professor russell! I totally disagree with all the other reviews given about this teacher. She is so knowledgeable about the material, but the important thing is that she is sooo nice. She is THRILLED to help students on their papers, to just come talk to them after class, and to really get to know her students, even to talk to them on the phone during her own free time to help them out. I spoke to her many times throughout the semester and always found her engaging and insightful, not to mention very helpful on providing sources for papers. The class itself is discussion based and, while not all did participate, the ones who did I think got a lot out of the discussions, which I think really did pertain to the readings, contrary to the previous reviewer. I can not praise her enough!!!!

I don't care about the course (It was great though?! Super interesting, great topics, good readings, never dull, amazing discussion!) I care about Judith Russell. Judith Russell is wonderful. WHERE is this woman's gold nugget? She deserves it. The amount of time she spends in office hours is astonishing, and it is incredibly obvious how much she cares about and respects her students. She is by far the most approachable professor I met at Columbia. For her mentorship and office hours chats alone, any class she teaches is worth taking. Her name is going in the "acknowledgments" section of absolutely everything (if anything...lol) I get published. Her teaching? She's smart as hell, and it shows. Also, unapologetically liberal as f*ck. She is just a super fun person to sit in seminar with. eleven out of ten.

Russell is brilliant, but her lectures can be a bit disorganized dry, especially later on in the semester, when we discussed public policy, for which *there were no readings other than her book.* Overall, however, I learned a lot The readings could be long, tedious, and dry, but my TA was good at explaining them succinctly. This is *not* a repeat of AP Gov from high school -- you're not learning how a bill gets passed or things like that. Russell likes to talk about the theory behind how government works. She does have a political agenda, and this is made very clear to you by the end of the first lecture, and it does carry through her lectures. If you're not liberal, you might not like this. Either drop the class and take it with someone else, or bite the bullet and take it with Russell. Attendance is mandatory in both lectures and discussion sections, and Russell is fanatical about this -- there is an attendance sheet that circulates every lecture, and the TAs all take attendance in section.

Her lectures are AWFUL and boring. That said, she requires attendance at them but if you have a friend to check your name off the list my advice is to not go. Her guest speakers, for the most part were very interesting and she tested on them so you should go to those. The course material itself was very intersting if you like cities and/or politics. Although you could probably get away without reading most, or all, of it doing it probably made studying for the final easier, and it was generally pretty good.

I would like to congratulate Judith for writing a book. If you take this class, all you need to know is that Judith wrote a book. This is the most ridiculous excuse for a colloqium. She assigned about 5 books that you had to read and take notes on (hello 3rd grade) for every class. These were not interesting books, THEY WERE REFERENCE BOOKS. so after you spend 6590860965095 hours reading these books, one might assume that they will be discussed during the 2 hour session. WRONG. instead she likes to discuss all the random facts she knows about kennedy's presidency. if you do not know these random facts (WHICH ARE NOT IN THE READINGS) she will berate you for not participating enough. so either read an encyclopedia over the summer or choose another class. the situation is lose- lose. Let's not forget the almighty 25 page paper, which she grades randomly.

If you are interested in how policies are made in the U.S., I would definitely recommend this class (and especially Professor Russell). A lot of the skills from this class can be applied throughout political science courses (and post-grad). 1 Columbia University: Arts & Sciences Spring 2023 Course: POLSUN3921_003_2023_1-AMERICANPOLITICSSEMINAR : POLSUN3921_003_2023_1 - AMERICAN POLITICS SEMINAR Instructor: Judith Russell