Kenneth Jackson

Amazing professor. One of the best I've ever had. I'm really sad he's retiring next year. He really cares about people and individuals in a way that's sadly becoming out of vogue with newer faculty. Seriously, there's a new professor in the history department who doesn't believe that individuals matter in war and leadership. The guy literally told me that an army could fix itself, without leadership directing it. Anyway, Jackson really focuses on how war effects individuals, and civilians. The downside to his course is that he's rather disorganized, and sometimes we're watching really boring movies in class. but TAKE ONE OF HIS CLASSES. You won't regret it.

To be quite honest, I don’t know what I was expecting from this class. Both here at Columbia and in high school, military history was never really explored in depth beyond, “These are important battles, actors, etc.” We never did battle analyses and we were often more concerned with the outcomes and impacts of the wars rather than the techniques, generals, ships, weaponry, etc. So I thought that this class might be an exciting way for me to learn more about an area of history that I have not yet covered. While Jackson is obviously very passionate about this material, he was often very, very unprepared. The lectures were haphazard, often going on tangents, with generally unhelpful PowerPoints that were either vague maps or incredibly long and detailed list of dates of battles, involving specific troop movements. The material covered was covered in the wrong order, at the wrong level of detail, with small details that you would have to put together into the bigger picture, rather than the other way around. I would much rather have a general overview of the war, know some key battles, general movements, technologies, strategies, etc. that influenced the war and its outcome, rather than have a litany of events in North Africa, then Europe, then the Pacific, then Korea, etc. I would have also appreciated knowing how these wars affected the home front and social conditions. This was…

I found this course to be excellent and eyeopening. Those who have criticized Kenneth Jackson are expecting too much. Perhaps he isn't as spry as he used to be, but come on! he's 72! While his lectures didn't have strict organization and he had a habit for getting off into tangents, Jackson was extremely engaging. He also has an old world sense of Southern class. You will learn to love his drawl. Personally, I found the material fascinating. This class provides a whole new outlook for understanding the United States. The history of urban development in this country does not get as much attention as it should, and Jackson advances a number of theories on how urban influences affected U.S. history. Moreover, you get a sense for how urban landscape of America developed and how those developments affect the world we live in today. Fascinating stuff. Additionally, I thought the tour requirement was a great idea. As Jackson explains on the first day, going to a place is usually far more memorable than what you learn in class. The one huge downside of the course was my TA, Aurelie, who was without question the WORST TA I've had at Columbia. She did a pretty terrible job of leading discussion, and didn't help us digest the readings at all. Many of the times she managed to direct discussion away from relevant topics to ones completely irrelevant to the course. Remarkable. The section w…

I very much disagree with the previous reviewers. Professor Jackson's class is the sort of experience where you will get exactly what you put into it. Unfortunately, for many students in a 300+ lecture class, this meant skipping lectures, coasting through discussion sections, and half-assing it on assignments. To be fair, it's unsurprising that there's some disappointment with Jackson's class: his lectures can (at times) be vague or repetitive; some of the books fail to be compelling; and the field trip requirement can be tedious (especially when not planned out properly--many of my friends didn't go to any the first half of the semester and got screwed around finals season). That being said, Jackson is a living legend at Columbia (and unfortunately at age 72 he may not be living too much longer). For those that actually do the readings, you will learn more about New York City than you thought there was to know. If you keep your ears open in lecture and your eyes open on the field trips, you'll leave the semester with a factoid about every other block in the city--something I love to share whenever I have relatives in town. Jackson's class gave me the single largest bulk of information of any class I've taken in 3 years at Columbia. That not to mention the fact that his Tennessee frankness makes lectures delightfully entertaining. Jackson rambles, yes, but his anecdotes are ge…

He requires one book a week for discussion. You don't have to know it all. Understand important concepts, and details. Expect to answer questions like "Why did Hitler attack the Soviet Union when they were his allies?" or "Why wasn't the United States ready for the attack on Pearl Harbor?" He is a total nerd about the subject matter, and likes to lead the conversation. You can get away with saying little, but at least say something substantive. He will call on you if you are mute. He will avoid you if your comments are inane. You will be graded only on the two papers. He will provide the prompt for the first one, and the subject of the second will be up to you (he must approve it, however). He likes concise, clear writing; edits comprised most of the marks he made on my papers. (DON'T repeat any word in the same paragraph. That is his pet peeve.) If you want to know precisely why he marked down your grade, you may have to meet him during office hours, since he is vague in his written comments. At random points of the semester, he will want you all to turn in a short draft of your research paper. A one-page summary here, a 4-5 page bibliography there. None of this is graded. He doesn't worry about reading this early writing, either. It is all required so he knows you are progressing. Have fun with it. Jackson does. Like I wrote, he is a nerd for this stuff. If you can relax, co…

I can't figure out how I feel about this class. On the one hand, I learned a lot of certain wars, as well as strategic maneuvers, which is why I wanted to take the class. On the other hand, Professor Jackson frequently gave out irrelevant or incorrect facts, had not very useful power points, was easily led on a tangent, and had virtually pointless readings. However, you could tell that Professor Jackson truly was interested in the subject matter, which is a plus, so for some battles he would be able to give a very good in-depth analysis of what happened. I came out of the class with a stronger knowledge of military history, and an interest to take more history classes of the sort. The class was often divided up in the first forty five minutes was Professor Jackson lecturing, and the latter half was watching a movie clip. It was a very easy class work-wise, and there was little class participation. When there was, the question was generally not fully resolved, and a comment was generally waved away. If you are interested in taking an easy history course, or are interested in building a foundation in modern warfare, take this class.

This course was a massive disappointment for me. Lectures were way behind schedule and plenty of topics we were told would be addressed were left out. Lectures had no shape to them and frequently only reached an interesting question in the last five minutes after ages of rambling to no particular point. At least three lectures were just watching videos. We frequently had guest lectures, which were hit and miss: some were better-prepared and thus more compelling than Jackson's; some seemed irrelevant and shapeless. The readings were often interesting and if you have a good TA, that will save the class (I had Ian Shin, who was awesome; Joanna Dee Das also seemed to know her stuff). The problem with this class is its tendency to chuck a lot of information at you, not in a particularly sifted or structured way, most of which will be irrelevant, with no central question or problem or theme to bind it all together. I was coming to this thinking it would be more of a history class. Those coming to it with an interest in urban studies or sociology might find it more interesting, but I found its shapelessness and Professor Jackson's lack of commitment (entertaining though he is) extremely frustrating.

This class was a huge disappointment. Jackson is a decent lecturer, but not necessarily enough to make it work waking up for a 10:35 class. Add that to the fact that some of his 'lectures' are just him playing documentaries that happen to feature him commenting about the subject on hand. Do yourself a favor and buy the PBS special miniseries of the history of New York on DVD. Congratulations - you just bought 3 of the 22 lectures in this class, and you didn't even have to pay any tuition! The neighborhood report is a joke - it's a high-school level assignment (a glorified book report), but it's a huge pain to visit the neighborhoods, as none are in New York. You're lucky if your neighborhood is only an hour away by subway. The walking tours/field trips could hardly be scheduled more inconveniently. A few were even scheduled during the lecture time - I kid you not. It adds insult to injury when you find out that most of the tours are run by a tour company that was founded by one of Jackson's old students (and which employs many Columbia graduate students/alumni as tour guides). I stopped going to the class a week before the midterm (except for the two exams, I didn't even set foot inside the lecture room afterwards, though I did go to recitation). Didn't miss a thing, apparently, since I did very well in the course anyway. I'm a bit sad, because I was really excited to take thi…

This class was amazing. I took Jackson's lecture classes as an underclassman (City of NY and American Urban Hist) and liked them, so was happy to have him in a seminar setting. Both he and Ballon really know their stuff and I think they compliment each other really well. While Jackson sometimes meanders, everything he has to say is really interesting and Ballon would get the seminar back on track. Robert Moses is a really interesting character and for those of us interested in Urban history he comes up time and time again so it was awesome taking a class just about him. The seminar was about half-lecture, half- discussion which I really liked - I've found seminars with all discussion to be pointless because everyone just regurgitates reading. In lieu of a seminar paper, we had 3 groups and each group researched an aspect of Moses' involvement: parks & recreation, urban renewal & housing, and roads. I'm not a big fan of group work but everyone's projects came together by the time of our presentation. Still, I think I would have preferred to work alone. Regardless, the course was excellent and I'd highly recommend it.

Perhaps the best thing about this course is Professor Jackson’s genuine love of the subject matter. He is passionate about the material yet maintains the tact and sensitivity necessary for a meaningful analysis of modern warfare. Professor Jackson claims that he cannot do the material justice and often incorporates outside sources to compensate. He supplements his lectures with film selections on an almost daily basis and, on several occasions, he brings in guest lecturers. There are sporadic reading assignments which are too long to be practical. As a non-history major, I didn’t have time to dedicate to over a hundred pages of overly-technical battle accounts. The written assignments are somewhat vague, which can adversely affect your grade if you don’t meet the TAs unclear expectations. The tests consist of short answer IDs and essay questions. Some of the IDs are really obscure names that were only discussed in a single lecture. This is probably the best reason for attending lecture regularly.