Severin Fowles

I loved this course so much, it completely exceeded my expectations. This course blew me away with its depth and specificity, and I left with a rich and nuanced understanding of a what it means to study a multi-species archaeology of settler colonialism, specifically in New Mexico. Professor Fowles, or Sev as his students call him, is undoubtedly one of the best, if not the best, professors I have had at Barnard. He is an expert in his field but treats his students as valued members of his team. He is a fantastic lecturer and always more than happy to answer questions. I cannot recommend him enough!!

This is the best class I have taken at college so far! Sev is the coolest professor and he really cares about his students. His powerpoints are next level and you must at least shop his class to see how advanced and elite the quality of his powerpoints is. I don't think its possible to not be interested in this class. Sev is so passionate about what he teaches and wants to impart the most information possible on us to the point that we often don't finish the powerpoints each class session. Sometimes the amount of information and the rush to finish the powerpoint is a little bit overwhelming but Sev is just really good at his job and the information itself its very interesting so its not bad at all. Sev also has optional discussion sections that are kind of like labs, for example for one of them we got to see the skull casts of different hominid species, and for others we just reviewed with TAs and talked about essays. He also has "dangerous optional exercises" which include flint-knapping on Futter field and making and throwing paleolithic style spears at Riverside park. There is a decent amount of reading in this class around 50 pages per week in the beginning and by the end he gives us books to read but we usually have two weeks to finish those. We had two 5 pages essays, and one 10 page essay (all 3 essays were pretty open and allowed for creativity), a take home midterm, a…

I think that Sev is a great teacher. He tries to connect with students on a personal level, albeit a large sized class. Work in this class is minimal, with my specific semester consisting of 4 short papers (4 pages, double spaced) and 1 term paper (10 pages, double spaced). Attendance to lecture is not required. Attendance to recitation is not required. if for whatever reason you cannot make it to either, Sev is very open and willing to work with you one-on-one for both class-related reasons or not. I highly recommend this course. Sev is interesting as a lecturer, has insightful things to say but also opens up the conversation and allows for students to make their own conclusions and discuss them in class as well as explore through papers. The readings assigned are of the lighter workload, not nearly as much as in classes like lit-Hum or CC. For the most part you can even get away without reading them before class. But it is necessary to read them at least in part, since they are to be used as references on the shorter papers. Sev even goes as far as to provide the readings as PDFs so that you don't need to pay for the whole book! 10/10

awesome awesome class. this anthro department is really balanced out by Sev Fowles. It seems that everyone is writing good reviews on him, so I will focus on the class. This class moves from idol worship through fetishism and anthro theories on magic into iconoclasm and art theory. its awesome He loves archaeology, but really engages in a ton of other theory- and never fails to make it relevant to us and whats happening in our world. current events are not tangents, but rather excellent illustrations of what we are talking about and great ways to tie the theory together and animate it. i love him and his classes. couldn't praise his classes enough

The material for this class is boring and dense, but Sev really does try his best to get through it. He always runs out of time, and he seems rarely to make a succinct, clear point about any of the theorists' work--not that any of their work can actually be translated into simple terms--but the personal responses he wants in the papers demonstrate his desire to make the class applicable to students' own interests and experiences. If you have to take anthro theory, you're probably better off taking it with Sev than with anyone else.

Sev is such an amazing teacher! He is so passionate about what he is teaching. I generally really liked the class, though it was a lot of work and I found out anthropology/archaeology are frustrating fields because a lot of the material we learn is mere speculation, sometimes I felt like I didn't actually learn anything real because we learned a lot of theories that weren't proven. But that is just the nature of the subject, nothing wrong with Sev. He is just such a sweet guy, everyone loves him!

Sev is a glorious teacher. He is inspired and inspiring. He teaches using slides of funny, insightful, problematic, and thought-provoking images to supplement his knowledgeable discourse on the native american peoples who inhabited this continent before european colonialism. he is intimately familiar with this area of study. he is good at being responsive to student input while not compromising the facts (he'll tell you when an idea is brilliant, or interesting, or wrong). he is very friendly and very helpful, so talk to him about your interests/research/assignments. He also gives good feedback--useful feedback that will help you work better in (and out of) his class. he is not a harsh grader and it is very possible to do well in this class if you read the assigned texts and if you're a decent writer. we covered fascinating, surprising native american cultures and examined their relationships to our world today. when you take this class, you'll realize how bizarre it is that most americans know so little about real native american civilizations. highly recommended.

a lot---------- a lot of enjoyable work. weekly blog posts, midterm paper and hefty 15-20 page final. be creative!!

I love Sev because he is genuinely interested in the contributions of his students. He speaks to us like we are the next generation of anthropologists. He also tries hisdamnest to make dusty old texts relevant - omissions from the anthropology canon and more nuanced sentiments of particular anthropologists uncovered and contextualized within his meta-narrative of the field (he draws great ugly pictures of the ever-receding homunculus and diagrams of "the third thing" to boot). Sev's enthusiasm and investment in the class compelled me to think deeply about the material. Class often ran a minute or two late but I usually wanted to stay longer. Sev hand-grades all submissions and gives each one considerable thought (5 4-5 page response papers responding to different units in the class, worth 50% of grade. 30% of grade is class participation, 20% is a profile of a scholar, presented in collaboration with a couple other students via power-point the first ten minutes of class. All of this is highly doable, especially because with deadlinesSev is fuzzy around the edges). He is generous in his feedback, provided you put a real effort into your ideas. As a teacher, Sev is humble, well-read and idealistic - these qualities trounce any delay in handing back writing or forgetting to look at the clock.

Amazing teacher and truly amazing class. Severin is really talented at teaching and engaging a very large class: I never skipped once, and genuinely never wanted to. The class is so interesting and is not typical: he explores the history of changing theories on human origins, especially the feminist theories, which was so great. He always takes questions and responds to them fully, but never compromises disagreeing with you while still respecting the point. Despite a large class size, he asks students to answer questions about their own theories about a certain burial site. He is one of the few perfect men in the world. I really can't emphasize enough how amazing, life-changing he was.