department
art history

Professor Lisa Tiersten is by far the most amazing human being you'll ever meet. At first, the class was super-intimidating: she speaks fast (REALLY FAST), uses very big vocabulary (I'm an international student who just learned English), I did not even have a clue about so much in the class and I did not know what to do. I went to her office hours a couple of times and had numerous email exchanges (she responds before you even hit send) to discuss that––I really felt like a monkey in the beginning. Through that, she made it clear that I should only focus on learning. To be honest, I spent many many hours doing all of the readings and trying to make up for my weaknesses; however, it was totally worth it. Halfway, I turned into a different student: the monkey turned into a tiny historian–I got more confident, started learning how to evaluate texts from a historical perspective and discuss them. Also, I started using these ism suffixed words correctly, A JOKE! The bottom line, in my opinion, Professor Lisa Tiersten is a treasure, and taking one of her courses is a MUST.

I absolutely loved Professor Kasara's Introduction to Comparative Politics Class. I have absolutely no idea why all of the other reviews were so negative toward her teaching of this class. She is extremely informed about the topic, her lectures are engaging and interesting, and I left the class with a much stronger understanding of the subject. She has very informative slides and posts them after every class, so you never have to worry about missing any core information. The workload was very manageable and exactly what I would expect for an Intro Poli-Sci class. The tests were not any more challenging than the class would merit. The TAs gave very informative feedback on tests and were more than happy to talk through any questions you had about the class. The tests all cover material that was extensively covered in the lecture. There is only one paper and it is over a very basic, core principle of the class. Professor Kasara was very generous with grades and even changed her entire grading scale when my class was doing worse than her previous classes had done in order to help improve our grades. I would highly highly recommend this class for everyone who is interested in the field of Political Science. I cannot wait to take more classes with Professor Kasara in the future.

I had high hopes for this class given that Prof. Higonnet is considered a legend at Barnard, but maybe it was zoom/covid/TA strike/every other problem of the Spring 2021 semester but I was left disappointed. The zoom lectures left something to be desired. She was hard to follow at times and moved around the set works without doing deep into any one. I came in with some knowledge of art history, so maybe that's why this course didn't really satisfy me. I think it was interesting that she brought in a number of modern works throughout the course. If you are taking it on zoom be aware that there will be two breakout rooms each class with a random assortment of people from a 300 person lecture. The grading policy was all over the place. Some TAs were nice some TAs were mean. There was no overall grading policy and they were very heavy-handed. I would not say that this was as much of a cakewalk as I had hoped. Also, you didn't even need to attend the lectures to write the papers, they were 100% analytical. Can't really speak on the final because it was canceled due to the TA strike. As an individual, Prof. Higonnet was very accommodating to the strike, shifting the point values around, setting up some limited in-person events, but overall, I wasn't "changed" by the class. The grading policies and lack of really getting into the material makes it less likely I would take this class again.

I had high hopes for this class given that Prof. Higonnet is considered a legend at Barnard, but maybe it was zoom/covid/TA strike/every other problem of the Spring 2021 semester but I was left disappointed. The zoom lectures left something to be desired. She was hard to follow at times and moved around the set works without doing deep into any one. I came in with some knowledge of art history, so maybe that's why this course didn't really satisfy me. I think it was interesting that she brought in a number of modern works throughout the course. If you are taking it on zoom be aware that there will be two breakout rooms each class with a random assortment of people from a 300 person lecture. The grading policy was all over the place. Some TAs were nice some TAs were mean. There was no overall grading policy and they were very heavy-handed. I would not say that this was as much of a cakewalk as I had hoped. Also, you didn't even need to attend the lectures to write the papers, they were 100% analytical. Can't really speak on the final because it was canceled due to the TA strike. As an individual, Prof. Higonnet was very accommodating to the strike, shifting the point values around, setting up some limited in-person events, but overall, I wasn't "changed" by the class. The grading policies and lack of really getting into the material makes it less likely I would take this class again.

I had high hopes for this class given that Prof. Higonnet is considered a legend at Barnard, but maybe it was zoom/covid/TA strike/every other problem of the Spring 2021 semester but I was left disappointed. The zoom lectures left something to be desired. She was hard to follow at times and moved around the set works without doing deep into any one. I came in with some knowledge of art history, so maybe that's why this course didn't really satisfy me. I think it was interesting that she brought in a number of modern works throughout the course. If you are taking it on zoom be aware that there will be two breakout rooms each class with a random assortment of people from a 300 person lecture. The grading policy was all over the place. Some TAs were nice some TAs were mean. There was no overall grading policy and they were very heavy-handed. I would not say that this was as much of a cakewalk as I had hoped. Also, you didn't even need to attend the lectures to write the papers, they were 100% analytical. Can't really speak on the final because it was canceled due to the TA strike. As an individual, Prof. Higonnet was very accommodating to the strike, shifting the point values around, setting up some limited in-person events, but overall, I wasn't "changed" by the class. The grading policies and lack of really getting into the material makes it less likely I would take this class again.