Mark Taylor

CULPA reviews for Mark Taylor seem to gravitate towards two poles: The Mark-Taylor-is-god camp and the Mark-Taylor-is-a-total-fraud camp. I have had a lot of contact with Professor Taylor. I was in his first class as a sophomore and I just finished a second (required) class with him as a senior, I've frequented his office hours, and I think I'm as qualified as an undergraduate will be to present a fair critique of him. This man has been an integral part of my academic experience. But, unfortunately I have moved over the course of those two years from being entrenched in the former camp to being firmly in the latter. First lets get some basic commonalities of all Taylor classes out of the way. First of all, the readings for his classes are invariably excellent. The Religion and Postmodernism syllabus in particular is stuff that you really won't read in almost any other class (De Certau, Jabes, Kristeva, Blanchot). However, the reading lists are also always absurdly, truly absurdly, long. If someone wanted to concentrate solely on this class, it would probably be plenty of work for an entire courseload. Taylor says this is because syllabuses are required to have 200+ pages of reading per week or something, but, strangely, no other classes that I've been in have had this requirement. In any case, he does not give any hint on which 30 pages (which would be plenty) to concentrate o…

How to read theory, how to formulate an opinion, how to THINK, how to write....plus immeasurable knowledge and insights.

I highly recommend this class ! I think the negative reviews are a reflection of frustration and not terribly fair to what prof. taylor is trying to accomplish. If you read his book "Hiding" it is essentially in a nutshell what the class is about - new ways of looking and thinking about meaning that is hiding in multiple ways. I read the CULPA reviews before taking the class and reluctantly signed up since it was a requirement for religion majors. After a month I considered dropping the class because the reading was voluminous for a 3 point class and the existentialist lectures over my head. My pride would not let me quit, and I am the better for it. When the light went off and I finally got it, it was awesome ! Orgasmic bliss. When I finally undertood Hegel, it all came together and made sense. Prof. Taylor forced me to go beyond the limits I imposed on myself, and stretch my mind way out there. that is what the college experience should be, and to top it all I ended up with a very nice grade.

I learned about a lot of interesting philosophical perspectives full of depth that gave me better perspective on the events occurring around me, my life, and the stories I'm writing. I also learned a few ways to account for not having time to complete unfairly long and dense readings and still being able to somewhat keep up.

Forget every other review. Take this class. If you are worried about your grade, take it pass/fail. You will learn. PERIOD. Mark C Taylor might be an "imposter" or a "fake philosopher" or a "capitalist intellectual" or whatever else you want to call him. But he knows his shit. He will lead you through 200 years of european philosophy. From Schelling to Derrida (including Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Durkheim, Darwin, Smith, and many more). Seriously, for your sake: TAKE THIS CLASS.

I learned a lot about the history of how religious theory has been approached by a wide variety of different thinkers. I learned a lot about how to direct a text, determine an author's motivations, and incorporate one reading with the next.

Welcome to the world of philosophy, arrogence, stupidity and c's if you are very lucky. If this is what you expect of your Columbia experiance I highly reccomend Mark Taylor. He does not seem to want to teach you anything. He seems as if he would much rather be writing another book to add to his twenty others. Think about it. If the guy is spending that much time writing, how much time can he have to prep for class? you want to study religion take this class with someone else or take it last because afterwards, if you take it first, it will be the last religion class you take. And that be a shame becausethe department is loaded with scholers who actually are brilliant lecturers, whose intrest is not in murdering your GPA, but getting you to learn as much in how to think and infromation as possible. And FYI, I am a grad student. I took the class for R credit. My opinion is based much more on papers of the undergrad students I saw, and the final , which I took for fun . It was inpossible. I felt horrible for the class. Aviod this class at all costs.

How to write and think about religion in the most unexpected ways.

Mark Taylor has been given a national teaching award. This does not mean that teaching awards know everything, but it might suggest that Taylor has been helpful to his students. To say that he was helpful to me would be an understatement. Taylor is a cowboy and a nerd and most fundamentally, a passionate person who does not find answers to his own questions and yet continues to ask his questions nonetheless. He is inspiring as a teacher and as a middle-aged human being because he is so rife with enthusiasm that his body jerks when he talks, as if it cannot contain the existential energy arising within it. You will likely not get an A in his class. Get over it and figure out what's really important.

I gained exposure to various ways to approach religious theory.