Marc Van de mieroop

Marc Van De Mieroop is an extremely intelligent man with a clear devotion to his chosen field of history and its intricacies. He's great at answering questions, and cracks the occasional joke which always lightens the class mood. He's a great educator, though sometimes he tends to go on tangents which may distract the class from the point of the lecture. You can tell when he likes a subject more than the other, as he puts more effort into the ones he is most interested in. He's a slow talker, but if you're genuinely interested in the subject topic, you should make it through just fine.

I was kinda scared before going into the class based on the very old reviews, but I actually ended up really liking the class. Professor is an old guy who talks a bit slow paced during class, which made it easy for me to catch myself feeling sleepy in class and dazing off. However, he is a really funny guy with a great personality, and sometimes when least expecting, he'd say something funny without trying hard and would make the class laugh. If you are into watching long boring documentaries with interesting content, you might love this class. In my case, I never fell completely asleep in class, because I have always found interest in the content of ancient Egypt but never took such a class until now. Sure, his lectures might be long or "boring", but if you're interested in the subject and enjoy learning from someone who is passionate and knowledgeable about a topic, take his class. It was not bad! More good than bad! Professor likes to do small tours at the Met's Egyptian Wing for his students within the class, and it's cool to tie what you learned in class to what you have easy access to a nearby museum. I like how compared to other Global Core classes of 4 credits, this class was one of a very light workload with only 2 papers, midterm, final, 1-hour long weekly discussion sessions, and about 20-40 pages of reading a week from Professor's own textbook. The textbook basical…

He really does not care about the class. He is pretty passionate about his own interpretations of the readings and is able to back them up, however. He will call you out if it is obvious that your comment is unfounded, but other than that it is a chill class. He is very knowledgeable, but class will be boring. He looks at the clock every five minutes towards the end of class, demonstrating his disinterest in the subject matter. I did not enjoy going to class, but I learned a moderate amount. Plus, he spends a class period reviewing for the final.

I must agree with the previous reviewer. How can you manage to make a class on ancient Egyptian history so uninteresting? With so much fascinating stuff out there written and filmed about Egypt we were assigned to read the most boring text book of all timesby Nicholas Grimal. On top of that we spent hours on reading aloud ancient sources in class :-( That was the worst part. Truly speaking everything I know about Egypt now was gained from Columbia's collection of books in the library and in the process of writing a paper - not from the professor. It was really funny when he briefly mentioned Buhen fortress in class and specifically said that we did not have to remember that name and later included it into the map asssignment ont the midterm that had to be done with the closest precision or points were taken away. Boring, boring, boring.... + on top of all the bad things the TAs were not particularly interested in the class as they had nothing to do with Egypt. No discussion section, which might have been very helpful in this particular class to make sense of what Mieroop was saying in class.

Excellent seminar, very well organized - interesting topic. The readings were well chosen and not too burdensome and they lent themselves well to discussion. The second half of the semester consists of students presenting their research work on a topic of their choice. Professor van de Mieroop was very accessible outside of class. Excellent seminar for those interested in ancient history

I learned more of specifics of certain topics and important things from class that we should pay special attention to.

aspects of a longer research thesis project: prospectus, chapter drafting, thinking about evidence, etc.

I took Professor Van de Mieroop's Ancient Near East class in Spring 2010. He and his TA, Nathaneal Shelley were both excellent. Prof VdM's lectures were definitely interesting if you read the chapter in advance. The TA could not have been more helpful. He stayed after class to answer questions, answered questions via email in a relatively prompt fashion and held TWO review sessions before the final exam. Grading was more than fair in my opinion. If you are in it for the grade: You must read the chapters and the text analysis (1-3 page primary sources translated into english) before class. This amounts to ~50 pages of reading per week. If you read these and attend class, you'd be hard pressed not to get an A. If you are in it for the grades and do not care about expanding your knowledge base or are crushed for time, you do not need to read the secondary readings to do well in the class. There's a short (ours was 7 pages) paper as well. Given the subject matter assigned for the paper, I found 7 pages to be a breeze. If you are in it for the joy of scholarly pursuit: Besides doing all the stuff in the "for the grade" section, key in on Prof. VdM's focus on sources and how they are used to interpret the history. His big kick is looking at sources with a critical eye and being careful to differentiate facts from theories about what actually occurred in the Ancient Near East. As the…

This class is a waste of your tuition dollars. I took this class to be an easy global core. I started out going to every class - doing all the readings before class and taking thorough notes in class and discussion section. Then I realized class is completely pointless.... Reading the book and going to discussion section gets you an A. Discussion section was annoying. My TA was not familiar w the subject and basically prepared by reading the book. From the vibe I got, a lot of TA's were also TAing the class w/o any background in Egyptian history so everyone was kind of in the same boat and they couldn't answer questions. Also, the textbook (written by Professor Mieroop_ is all over the place (just like lecture) and its impossible to know what to focus on from the readings...the TA is incapable of prioritizing info... class is basically Professor Mieroop's random tangents. Bust I will say its fairly easy to do well in the class. tests are random terms (there is choice) and a large essay question thats usually vague and you can kind of BS your way through. To reiterate, this class was super disappointing for me - I went most of the semester doing all readings and participating to fullest extent just to realize it was a complete waste of time. Discussion sections are also super annoying bc there are pop quizzes made up of random terms that he never mentions in class and are menti…

At first, I liked Prof. Van De Mieroop. He is obviously an intelligent man (a top dog in MEALAC, or so I hear) with an interesting background and interesting ideas about the things he studies. He is also not afraid to tell a student when they are wrong, which is always a plus. On top of that, he conducts Lit Hum very informally. You can say what you want and when, and he often dismissed us after only an hour or so. Despite all this, the class was a complete drag. I dreaded it every Tues/Thur, and found myself watching the clock throughout. It wasn't until I switched classes second semester that I figured out why. Like other reviewers have mentioned, Prof. Van De Mieroop doesn't want to be in class any more than his students do. This makes the class easy to coast through, but it also makes for lackluster discussion and general ill-will amongst students. TAKE IT FROM ME: A Lit Hum professor who is excited about the material and teaching it makes that class worth it (not to mention bearable), even if he/she expects a little more of you than the Van De Mieroops out there.