ENGN 3840

This class is a lot of fun but isn't for everyone. I personally enjoy Prof Obrien and think he lectures well, but that opinion can go both ways. I thought the reading were really engaging and, as a non-engligh major, it knocked a lot of books off my bucket list. You have to read ~80 pages/class, a discussion every other week, and two papers. The workload makes it a fun, interesting break in my day for me. Be ready for almost nonstop lectures going over the meaning and points of the work and don't be afraid to talk in class.

This class is terrible and I would advise against taking it. I went into this class expecting it to be engaging, interesting, political, and humorous. However, the class fails to be any of these. The works that Professor O'Brien chooses are not particularly interesting. Additionally, O'Brien does a poor job of addressing the actual satirical aspects of the work. For a class on satire, it seemed as if we never really addressed the issues being satirized or even the methods used to satirize. O'Brien is not an interesting lecturer and the class nearly put me to sleep daily. When people in the class try to participate and spark discussion (which would make the class far more interesting), O'Brien seems-- as another user mentioned-- impatient. O'Brien simply nods his head along, obviously not really listening or caring, then quickly jumps to whatever point he wants to make, which is rarely more insightful than what the student had to say. Avoid this class. It wasn't particularly difficult but there are far more interesting classes and professors at UVA.

I was attracted to this class because I wanted to learn about satire, but the content we covered for the majority of the class was so boring. We read a lot of ancient Roman satirical poetry, and when O'Brien droned on in lecture the material put me to sleep. The final paper had to do with ethics, which we'd never talked about once during class, and when people contributed to class discussion, a lot of times Prof. O'Brien seemed really impatient or didn't comment. Overall, the class was fine, but content wasn't interesting until the very end of the course.