ENGL 2599

Professor Casteen was the first professor to make me actually enjoy literature! I'm not an English major, and the only other English courses I've taken are honors/AP/ENWR throughout high school and my first semester at UVA. I chose to fulfill my second ENWR requirement with this course and am so happy that I did. (This is coming from someone who's always aced English classes via the bare minimum for an A, but has viscerally hated them my entire life.)

First off, Casteen genuinely cares about how you're doing in his course, and makes helpful suggestions on how to improve your writing. He's easy to approach/set up office hours with, clarifies his expectations for his assignments, responds to his emails in a timely manner, and somehow manages to make every single class interesting. His lectures were never boring. To be honest, his classes weren't really lectures at all. Every class is more of a discussion regarding the topics we read about. The readings were never too long, maybe 10-15 pages at most. If I remember correctly, you're only graded for your writing and participation. It seems intimidating, but if you put in the work and communicate with him, you will be rewarded. Getting an A in his class requires effort, but it's not impossible. He's a fair instructor, so I ended with an A-.

Grading: Most of the class was graded on your writing (60%), and there were only 6 or 7 writing assignments. 20% comes from participation in discussion, and the final 20% comes from the final writing assignment. He doesn't accept late work (immediate 0%/F), unless you communicate that to him in advance.

TDLR: Great professor, I put the work into his class because 1) I felt like he deserved my best work considering how much he cares about his students/how well he teaches 2) I wanted to do well and improve in this class despite having other difficult classes that required more of my attention 3) I wanted a good grade. Your essays can't be like the "essay sandwich" or whatever you were taught in middle school. Aka, don't limit your essays to 5 paragraph, keep expanding your ideas to as many paragraphs as you need to get your point across clearly. It will be a rough start, so you should communicate with him as much as possible (office hours/emails). Make sure to ask him where you made mistakes so you don't repeat them. Send him an email about wanting to talk after class about your work, and he'll make the time for it. His classes are never boring, and it's worth your time. I'm not an English major (I'm a biology major) and I can say this is the best class I've taken at UVA.

Tips: I annotated all the readings, which helped tremendously with the writing assignments. Also, there's a diagnostic writing assignment (it's the first writing assignment he gives you), and you should write as much as you can on it. If I remember correctly, he lets you write about whatever you want. So, make sure you give him more content to critique so that when the graded stuff comes around, you're more prepared and your grade doesn't take as much of a hit.

Ironically, I'm writing this a year after taking it as a late night afterthought. So no, this review is not grammatically correct or phrased perfectly. Professor Casteen, if you're seeing this, it's just "A Collection of Thoughts" :)

This class was very straightforward, and I enjoyed Casteen as an instructor a lot. He always did his best to make classes interesting with his "early bird specials" and was very easy to talk to. The essays you read are interesting and not too long except for a handful. Take notes while reading and think about things that you might want to discuss with the rest of the class. Participation makes up a decent portion of your grade (20%), and that was the only thing that kind of got me. I found the essays pretty easy since the prompts are very open.

This was my first class at UVA, and I couldn't have asked for a better introduction. Professor Casteen might seem intimidating at first, but he's an incredibly cool guy who lives and breathes UVA. He offers so many cool stories and genuine life advice during his lectures that make the experience more valuable than just fulfilling the second writing requirement.

As for the content, though, there were a very diverse selection of essays to read, three essays, and a final exam. As a summer course, it was naturally a lot of stuff crammed into a few weeks, but I'm sure it's more manageable during a normal semester. You're not going to like everything you read, because it's such a broad survey of the essay as an art form, but there are almost certainly going to be a few that grip you if you give them a proper chance. Casteen is also a very fair grader, so non English majors shouldn't be afraid to take this class. He offers great feedback on your writing and clearly explains what errors to avoid and exactly how many points you'll lose for each one. Overall, it's a fantastic English course that I'd recommend to anyone.