I loved this class! Professor Levitz is super sweet and goes in depth into the context surrounding the literature. Great guest speakers too. My TA, Drew, was incredibly witty and a lenient grader which helped. Definitely don’t look over this course!

This class centers heavily around racial and sexual issues in various old books. I'm still not entirely sure what the class was about even after taking it. It was very hard to make A's on the essays (4 total) and the best I did was an A- on the final essay. The only reason I didn't make a B in the class is because participation in discussions was worth 20% of the grade. I took this class as a first year in my first quarter so maybe that had something to do with how much I struggled. My discussion section was made up of mostly seniors and juniors (mostly premed or prelaw for some reason) and they still struggled. It is safe to say that professor's writing prompts were unbelievably lengthy and hard to follow. Many times the TA's had to decode them for us or just flat out tell her it was unfair to make it so complicated and difficult to understand. Even her revised versions were super vague and hard to know what exactly she wanted. Hope to God she doesn't end up having to grade one of your papers in place of a TA because her feedback might make you cry. It was insanely harsh. The TA even warned us and tried to do damage control before the comments came back. Your TA will be your best friend in this class. Email them, go to office hours, ask questions, and listen in discussions. They will guide you on how to write the essay even if you don't do any of the readings. If you're a good writer that's used to tough grading it'll be an easy class because of the light workload. If you're a stem major and looking for an easy GE or writing class this is not it. There's a bunch of weekly readings and lots of books she tries to get through. I bought like 6 books and we only touched a few. She's a character for sure but if at all possible find an easier class.

i absolutely loved this class! i took it as my writing 2 requirement and i was initially scared about the workload but this was super manageable. tbh i spent muchhh more time interacting with my TA instead of Professor Levitz, but she was still a great professor as well. i would often just watch the recordings of lecture because it wasn’t participation heavy at all and it was easier to watch sped up lol. you can also scrape by without going to lecture if u just do the readings. the course material is covered some interesting short stories, we also read Passing and Frankenstein. i wrote 3 papers for this class, and the final paper combines one of the previous essays and has you compare it with a new story. there were a few discussion posts throughout the quarter but not every week. i think the most important aspect of this class was the discussion sections. you definitely need to come to discussion prepared but they are well guided and the TAs were pretty chill. i participated in discussion a decent amount and i was worried i might get an A- in the class based on my essay grades, but the TA basically confirmed i would get an A regardless bc of participation. regardless, this was a super cool class and i definitely recommend it! if you have to write essays to graduate you might as well write about something interesting