Wolfgang Mann

Switch to a different LitHum. Professor Mann is incredibly old-fashioned in the sense that this seminar class turned into a 2-hour lecture in which no one was allowed to voice any sort of commentary on the text. His lectures felt more like ramblings on the style in which the texts were translated. He would focus on one single word and how it can be translated in a million different ways. This class was incredibly boring. As someone who struggled to understand the texts while reading them on my own, I would leave class even more confused. His office hours are not helpful because he is unfriendly. It's one of those classes where the only thing you learn is to adapt to how a professor grades in order to pass.

i was waiting to receive my grade from last sem before writing this review, and just got it this morning. so here we go. i feel like i should mention grades were due on January 2nd and it's currently the morning of January 30th, and my GPA has just been tanked, so im a little heated. At the same time though, I feel like the laziness and disorganization that brought about my grade being nearly a month late is the most important thing you need to know about him. this man is the only professor ive ever had who has been lazier than i am. and i mean that. mans literally promised us our grades by the next class, then canceled that class because of the "flu", just to do the same thing the next week. to be fair, prof mann's a pretty nice guy. always free for office hours and will genuinely work with u to develop your ideas. lectures can be unbelievably boring tho, and class is a lot less interactive than some other lit hum sections. it's basically just him talking for 2 hours straight as you try your hardest not to doze off (especially because class is at 8am). another thing-- you will have absolutely no idea how u did in the class until the end of the year. Im not sure how he usually grades, but last semester it went something like this: 3 in class passage id quizzes 1 textual analysis (like 2 pages) 2 longer essays (1400-1900 words) final THATS IT. THATS ALL WE WERE GRADED ON. no ho…

I disagree with the December 12, 2016 reviewer, even though I think I may have been in their section. Although it’s true that we did fall somewhat behind on the material and received assignments later than expected, I don’t remember this being a huge problem. The syllabus was off, but Prof. Mann usually let us know which reading to complete for next time at least one lecture in advance. As that earlier reviewer also pointed out, Mann did schedule make-up classes on the missed material (which he did not have to do) and held a lot of extra office hours toward the end of the semester in order to make sure that we could discuss our final papers with him if we wanted to. Logistical issues aside, I thought History I with Mann was a great class. The texts were amazing, and each of Mann’s lectures provided useful context about them and helped me notice things in them that I would not have picked up on my own. This was my first philosophy course that involved reading, and I felt so engaged with the material that it convinced me to major in the subject. I also visited office hours a few times and did not find Mann lacking in social skills (re: some of the even earlier reviews). As far as I can remember, he was appropriately courteous and direct in addressing my questions about the course material.

Look, I understand why Mann gets a bad rap. I didn't like him at first, either. He doesn't interact with the class much, snaps at people who show up late or text each other during class or just drop things, and he has this way of moderating every clause in his sentences -- "Socrates' message, if Socrates can be said to have a message, which is debatable given the ambiguity of the Greek word 'eudaimonia,' might be intended..." -- but after a few classes and a few cups of coffee, I realized that there's a great reason for all of those things. The reason is simply that this man is brilliant. He zeroes in on distinctions in the texts that seem insignificant at first; but if you do the reading and make an effort to follow his lectures, you realize that he's actually giving you a nuanced and completely fresh way to read the text. He does take questions at the end of class, but they tend to be questions that don't reflect an understanding of his lecture, and he can be a bit short in answering those. However, if you ask him something worthwhile -- which is difficult to do; make no mistake -- he'll sometimes devote a whole lecture to working on the problem. After class, he's generous with his time (he reads everyone's papers, even though the TAs have already graded them, and leaves comments), and he's a walking library of scholarship, ready with an article for any topic you can think o…

Oh, Professor Mann. How I disliked your class. Let me count the ways. You are ever so knowledgeable about Plato, but when you speak you are so boring I cannot follow what you say. You know ever so little about everything else, and yet you still lecture instead of having even one discussion. You say "you might think" so often, but you never ask us what we do, indeed, think. You are hands down one of the least interesting teachers I have ever taken at Columbia, and although your reviews were bad I thought you might be controversially interesting. I was wrong, Professor Mann, and I had to sit through the driest lectures known to Man(n) <--haha. I almost cried of joy when you said you weren't teaching next semester, not because I dislike you as a person, but because hopefully I won't feel my brain bleed every time the new professor speaks. I didn't know CC could be so uninteresting, but you rose above my hopes and made it literally the worst class it could possibly be. Thank you for my pain and suffering, and I hope you stick to not-CC in the future. I did quite like your rainbow plaid shorts with the high white socks, however. I might attend a Wolfgang Mann fashion show, if indeed such a thing existed.

Professor Mann is without a doubt intelligent; however he is consumed with the pedantry of a classical philologist. At no point during his seemingly endless lectures did anything of philosophical interest emerge. The majority of the class was spent pondering how to translate and re-translate various Greek terms, I guess in the hopes that such a futile exercise would give fuller meaning to AristotleÂ’s already dry and ponderous texts. The result was an exquisite torture that not even Dante could have concocted. Abandon all hope ye who enter this class.

I learned a lot about Ordinary Language Philosophy as a methodology, as well as more of how to read for a small seminar class at Columbia and produce topical and interesting papers.

I learned so much in this course. My research and writing skills certainly improved. I now have a better understanding of how to approach research papers of this kind. My presentation skills also improved.

He lectures the entire time, I found them to be somewhat hard to follow. 6.5/10

1 textual analysis (like 2 pages) 2 longer essays (1400-1900 words) 3 hour final