Professor: Campbell Course format: Seminar Number of respondents: 25 Total Enrollment: 32 Class Composition: Froshs: 9 Sophs: 9 Jrs: 3 Srs: 9 Concs: 3 Non-Concs: 16 Don't Know: 4

Instructor Average: 1.97 Course Average: 1.97

"The Harlem Renaissance" is a seminar course, so if you are considering it, be prepared to talk a lot in class and contribute to the discussions. There are no prerequisites for this course. Some of the respondents suggested that having some general idea of what the Harlem Renaissance was about is a help, but anyone can take this course, provided that she has enough time to do the reading.

Professor Campbell got mixed reviews from his students. Some felt that he was a very good professor, and praised him for being laid-back and open to students' ideas. Others thought that he let class discussions get out of hand, and that because of that, sometimes it seemed as though the class had no direction. Many of the students felt that they spent too much time listening to their classmates' ideas, and not enough time listening to Professor Campbell's. Although Professor Campbell was generally well-liked by his students, a couple of them wish that they had taken this course with a different professor.

There was no graded homework for this course, and there were no exams. The only graded assignment was the final paper, which had to be 20 pages in length, on a topic of the student's choice. Quite a few students say that they wish that they had had more graded assignments to help them prepare for the final paper. The students were also assigned one book to read per week, usually about 200 pages long, but sometimes as long as 400 pages. Class discussions were based almost solely on the books read. For this reason, the students advise you to take this course only if you have time to read, as this is definitely a reading-based course.

Most of the students found this course to be very interesting and insightful. Some of them said that they were sorry that they did not have more time to spend on individual books before moving on to the next ones; sometimes the class discussions deviated so much from the intended topics that the students did not know why they had been asked to read a book. This course is a big time commitment because of all of the reading, and while some of the students loved it, others wish that they had taken something else. A few students suggest that you take it only if you want an interesting fourth class, and that you take it S/NC.

View AA/0106 in the Brown Online Course Announcement.