ENGL 10A
Literatures in English to 1700
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisites: English Composition 3 or 3H, English 4W or 4HW. Survey of major writers and genres, with emphasis on tools for literary analysis such as close reading, argumentation, historical and social context, and critical writing. Minimum of three papers (three to five pages each) or equivalent required. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 5.0
Units: 5.0
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - I took Professor Shuger's class during the COVID-19 pandemic so all the lectures were prerecorded to watch in our free time while the live lectures were just optional office hours where students could pop in Zoom with questions. Her lectures were very interesting and she is obviously passionate about what she teaches. The grading was dependent on the TA with 3 papers total and a weekly quiz. The weekly quiz consisted of 5 questions based on the week's reading with 1 of the questions always being extra credit, so a 4/5 was 100%. This obviously helps out quite a bit! The extra question always ends up being about poem metrics where we would be asked to scan a line from the text. She was understandable that not everyone is amazing at poem metrics so Professor Shuger included an optional Final Exam for those struggling with quizzes. The reading and workload is quite heavy and difficult, but overall the class is doable as long as it's taken seriously. I'm not sure how much the class format will change after the pandemic, but I assume the extra credit on the quizzes and the 3 papers stay the same either way.
Fall 2020 - I took Professor Shuger's class during the COVID-19 pandemic so all the lectures were prerecorded to watch in our free time while the live lectures were just optional office hours where students could pop in Zoom with questions. Her lectures were very interesting and she is obviously passionate about what she teaches. The grading was dependent on the TA with 3 papers total and a weekly quiz. The weekly quiz consisted of 5 questions based on the week's reading with 1 of the questions always being extra credit, so a 4/5 was 100%. This obviously helps out quite a bit! The extra question always ends up being about poem metrics where we would be asked to scan a line from the text. She was understandable that not everyone is amazing at poem metrics so Professor Shuger included an optional Final Exam for those struggling with quizzes. The reading and workload is quite heavy and difficult, but overall the class is doable as long as it's taken seriously. I'm not sure how much the class format will change after the pandemic, but I assume the extra credit on the quizzes and the 3 papers stay the same either way.
AD
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2021 - I want to believe Professor Thomas is a cool person, but his lectures are very unorganized. Then again, I only really watched about 5/20 of them. After the first week, the class pretty much decided that we had no way of keeping track of exactly what he was really talking about. There were no lecture slides and he liked to skip around with his topics, or worse, spend half an hour going on a tangent. Depending on your TA, you might not even need to watch lecture or do readings(keep in mind this is COVID-19 time). For my TA, our papers were close readings of a work. This really means that I only had to read three works. I'm not a huge medieval fan so I was happy with that. When I did watch lecture to see if I could gather any contextualization/deeper insight into the work I was close reading, Professor Thomas didn't really provide anything substantial or mind-blowing to help. TAs decide your grade.
Spring 2021 - I want to believe Professor Thomas is a cool person, but his lectures are very unorganized. Then again, I only really watched about 5/20 of them. After the first week, the class pretty much decided that we had no way of keeping track of exactly what he was really talking about. There were no lecture slides and he liked to skip around with his topics, or worse, spend half an hour going on a tangent. Depending on your TA, you might not even need to watch lecture or do readings(keep in mind this is COVID-19 time). For my TA, our papers were close readings of a work. This really means that I only had to read three works. I'm not a huge medieval fan so I was happy with that. When I did watch lecture to see if I could gather any contextualization/deeper insight into the work I was close reading, Professor Thomas didn't really provide anything substantial or mind-blowing to help. TAs decide your grade.
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