Nancy Worman

Professor Workman is a great professor. She actively engages the class (even at 8am) and wants to see her students succeed. She is very well knowledgable on the topics and books discussed, and I could not be more happy with a professor like her. She is a hard grader and tough on us, but it comes from a good place and it's honestly worth it.

Nancy Worman is one of the best professors I have ever had. As another reviewer put it, she is staggeringly intellectual without forgetting to be realistic, empathetic, and even sassy. She never sacrifices intellectual content in order to make it "easy" for students, but at the same time, she understands that not all students share the same background (I was a non-Classics major taking the course with a few very well-read Classics majors) and is completely willing to pause and explain a tricky theoretical concept. Most importantly, although she is indeed "intimidating" - as some other reviewers put it - in the sense that she's basically incredible, she will never talk down to students. And she is completely uninterested, unlike some brilliant professors, in having students fangirl over how perfect she is. (Although we do.) I took Tragic Bodies to fulfill my visual arts requirement while staying as close to literature as possible, so that's my bias. But I think it was the most consistently interesting course I have ever taken. The syllabus begins with Greek drama and moves as the semester progresses to Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, and movies like Paris is Burning, Her, and Peter Greenaway's creepy artsy films. Another feature I appreciated in the course is that it incorporates canonical and non-canonical works and theories seamlessly. You will read Greek drama and Kristeva,…

As one would expect, this class was focused on the fundamentals of Greek: basic vocab, grammar and syntax were the rule. A year in, you should have a really serious foundation. Professor Worman made this class worthwhile and surivavable. She's first-rate teacher, and this is a class that requires four hours of serious in-class teaching every week. On top of that, she was extremely approachable and was always willing to help. That she takes her students' learning very seriously was evident throughout, which is reflected in her grading (see below) and I am so glad that I took this course with her and not with a grad student. She seems to have a great deal of background in the linguistic history of Greek, and always had an interesting exegesis of the passages we read in the second semester. Finally, it helps that she's genuinely lovely and interesting person, as the material is somewhat grueling. Professor Worman, at least, assigned written homework every other class or so. It averaged 2-3 hours, and at one point in the first semester ballooned to 5-6, but she cut it down when we told her. There were also readings in the second semester which averaged about an hour of work. We normally had a quiz every two or three weeks and two tests over the course of the semester, although there are supposed to be three. There is also a final. Professor Worman is a very light grader, as she ca…

Professor Worman is phenomenal. She is, to put it simply, the best teacher I've had at Barnard or Columbia. Professor Worman understands that by assigning less reading and by choosing it very carefully, it is possible to get much more out of each assignment. Her careful examinations of each reading gave me a deeper and more focused understanding of the subject matter than is usually gained in classes where hundreds of pages are assigned each week. Worman's lectures are smart, detailed, and avoid generalizations; she's not afraid to struggle through nuances to gives her students a more precise understanding. She also has an awesome dry sense of humor; for some reason, some students find this scary or off-putting, but I have no idea why. She is also friendly and approachable and something about being in her presence makes you smarter. As a reviewer a few years ago put it: My new goal is to be Nancy Worman.

I am not really sure how to feel about or describe Professor Worman. While I was reading through the previous reviews, I thought "Mmm, maybe" or "Ok, I guess...If you say so" but then I got to the one about her fake smile and something clicked. I can't say this is the worst experience that I have had at CU, but certainly not the best. She does sit there with this smile, this expression that you can't penetrate or truly identify. Her lips say smile, her eyes say something else. Oh and sometimes she does the swallow or take a deep breath and smile like she is just so annoyed with someone and she doesn't really want to say what is on her mind. I just didn't know how to read her and that can be frustrating. Worman is demanding. At first I thought this was a "tough love" style of teaching, but sometimes she simply seemed spiteful; she is the professor that you can never please. Did she really care? Is she trying to push me for my own good? Or is she just mean? I still don't know. I think she likes being intimidating. However, there is another side to her in which she is the cool, laid back professor that you can talk to w/out being afraid. She is witty, honest and intelligent. When she wasn't swallowing back her resentment or whatever it was, I enjoyed her frankness with the class. She is definitely more approachable than some professors, but be ware: in office hours she can be kin…

Professor Worman is such an asset to the Classics department. Not only is she so knowledgeable about Greek rhetoric but she also brings such enthusiastic energy that you can't help but being inspired to love seemingly difficult Socratic dialogue as well! In class we translated the Greek and she led us in discussion about the imagery and the bigger picture stuff but also encouraged us to ask questions and to tie in secondary literature to the text. I thought the reading (about 1.5-2 Stephanus pages/class) was fairly reasonable and most of the time people would volunteer to translate in class, so if you're prepared, speak up. Prof Worman is a really fair grader. This class was a stretch for me in terms of the Greek, but I did all the reading and I went to her office hours and I spoke up in class and I ended up doing very well in the class. Greek is hard enough as it is but there were never really any surprises on the quizzes or tests in terms of what she picked to test. She is obsessed with grammar, like reviews have said before, so know your Hansen and Quinn. Overall, Prof Worman is amazing and I intend to take everything she teaches before I graduate.

A good professor who will discuss Plato in interesting but not mind-blowing ways. She's glad to digress, very helpful while you're translating, and you get major points for translating the Greek literally. She is obsessed with Greek grammar. Know your conditionals, indirect question, indirect statement, objective/subjective genitive. If writing an essay, realize that she cares more about your translating and interpretation of the Greek than anything else. Absorb the main concepts from the secondary literature, but don't waste too much time on them. The Greek is what she cares about.

Amazing. If any professor is worthy of a cult following, it is Nancy Worman. Being her is my new career goal. She managed to make even the discussion of pretentious comp lit topics and difficult literary theory accessible and interesting. The class solidified my desire to major in Comp Lit and made me even more excited about the field.

Tough grader, writing assignments every class ( 5 freebies per semester), two essays, one midterm and one final - still worth it though, honestly.

A pretty fast-paced amount of reading. And she will know if you do not do it.