Professor
Joseph Dimuro
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2020 - Absolutely the most difficult class I've taken at UCLA. I love lofty thinking and learning about abstract theories/ideas, but for an undergraduate student taking a class online during COVID, it was way too much. I appreciate Dimuro's attempt to make us broaden our horizons and think about literature in new ways, but he's the type of professor to always ask for more and never truly explain the reading. The class would have been received better if he was less critical of students trying to wrap their head around new ideas.
Spring 2020 - Absolutely the most difficult class I've taken at UCLA. I love lofty thinking and learning about abstract theories/ideas, but for an undergraduate student taking a class online during COVID, it was way too much. I appreciate Dimuro's attempt to make us broaden our horizons and think about literature in new ways, but he's the type of professor to always ask for more and never truly explain the reading. The class would have been received better if he was less critical of students trying to wrap their head around new ideas.
Most Helpful Review
I recently took this course with Professor Dimuro. It says English 134 but I was in his 139 course. I gave him a great review in teacher evals, but if I could, I'd retract that review. Perhaps it was pity for this professor- he was angry that nobody spoke up in class although most of us are attentive, and stormed out of the classroom saying we don't care about our futures. We are at UCLA for a reason. Although he appears nice, he doesn't really give a damn about his students, as seen through his actions. We didn't get our first essay graded until 9th week, when the second essay was due during finals week. I don't think it's feasible to plop down a prompt 9th week and have students to do well on their essays due 10th week when we have other finals, without receiving feedback. On top of that, he loves to ask multiple choice questions on his finals, which I find ridiculous. Unlike other English classes where even if there are specific questions, his questions are a bit too specific- based on ridiculous background information of the novel, not the foreground text itself. I understand the author's background is important for understanding the work, but it shouldn't be tested on extensively. He also grades horribly unfair on his final essay analysis- it's pretty much not based on your explanation but if you can I.D. the work. Unlike other classes, where there are distinct authors, and distinct texts, the class I took was all Henry James. He took some obscure quote from the preface which sound very similar and a quote from a novel and all Henry Jamesian protagonists, if you read enough of him, are essentially the same. They have the same thought processes and downfalls, and imagery is almost identical across all works. He added 15 points to everyone's final score because we did so poorly- when did a humanities class have a straight out curve, when most people get D's and F's on their finals?
I recently took this course with Professor Dimuro. It says English 134 but I was in his 139 course. I gave him a great review in teacher evals, but if I could, I'd retract that review. Perhaps it was pity for this professor- he was angry that nobody spoke up in class although most of us are attentive, and stormed out of the classroom saying we don't care about our futures. We are at UCLA for a reason. Although he appears nice, he doesn't really give a damn about his students, as seen through his actions. We didn't get our first essay graded until 9th week, when the second essay was due during finals week. I don't think it's feasible to plop down a prompt 9th week and have students to do well on their essays due 10th week when we have other finals, without receiving feedback. On top of that, he loves to ask multiple choice questions on his finals, which I find ridiculous. Unlike other English classes where even if there are specific questions, his questions are a bit too specific- based on ridiculous background information of the novel, not the foreground text itself. I understand the author's background is important for understanding the work, but it shouldn't be tested on extensively. He also grades horribly unfair on his final essay analysis- it's pretty much not based on your explanation but if you can I.D. the work. Unlike other classes, where there are distinct authors, and distinct texts, the class I took was all Henry James. He took some obscure quote from the preface which sound very similar and a quote from a novel and all Henry Jamesian protagonists, if you read enough of him, are essentially the same. They have the same thought processes and downfalls, and imagery is almost identical across all works. He added 15 points to everyone's final score because we did so poorly- when did a humanities class have a straight out curve, when most people get D's and F's on their finals?
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Most Helpful Review
I don't know what the heck happened in the other reviewers' classes that they would give this guy a bad evaluation. He is an incredibly sweet, adorable man, who is interesting, somewhat humorous, helpful and welcoming. I wish I had gone to his office hours earlier in the lecture, we had an amazing time together. He's very laid back, sometimes lets you turn in your papers after the due date without caring or penalizing, his lectures are a perfect mix of abstract and concrete thoughts, and I didn't find his tests and papers that hard or complicated. It was 2 short papers, one long one and two tests. If you have an issue with reading looooooong novels, however, don't take this class. Victorian novels are long - Middlemarch is a good 600+ pages.
I don't know what the heck happened in the other reviewers' classes that they would give this guy a bad evaluation. He is an incredibly sweet, adorable man, who is interesting, somewhat humorous, helpful and welcoming. I wish I had gone to his office hours earlier in the lecture, we had an amazing time together. He's very laid back, sometimes lets you turn in your papers after the due date without caring or penalizing, his lectures are a perfect mix of abstract and concrete thoughts, and I didn't find his tests and papers that hard or complicated. It was 2 short papers, one long one and two tests. If you have an issue with reading looooooong novels, however, don't take this class. Victorian novels are long - Middlemarch is a good 600+ pages.
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