I really want to love and reccomend this class because the content is so interesting. However, the professor's disorganization makes it unnecessarily difficult.

First, the good parts: I LOVED the content; it was interesting and helped me realize the structural impacts of racism on the physical landscape, especially in education. I learned so much about the history of Charlottesville and the American South, and feel much more educated as a citizen.

My first problem with this class was the unpredictable schedule. For the first half of the class, we had manageable readings and regular group work projects. However, as the semester progressed, the schedule became increasingly inaccurate. The professor frequently changed due dates, assignments, and readings on short notice and sometimes failed to upload them at all. He decided to delay the midterm so much that we were working on our final projects and our midterm essays at the same time, which was very overwhelming.

My other major problem with the class was communication. Assignment expectations are not very clear, which is intended to be open-ended, but ends up leaving you confused about what to do/submit. The professor DOES NOT respond to emails ever. He makes this clear at the beginning of the semester, but that doesn't mean it isn't a huge pain and causes unnecessary stress.

Other notes:
1. This class SHOULD NOT fulfill the second writing requirement. If you are taking this class, expect it to be more of a history class than a literature or writing course. We wrote very little throughout the semester.
2. Assignments are not graded in a timely manner. I am writing this on 5/4 without knowing a single grade I have received during the semester. I was never sure how I was doing or whether I should have been attending office hours more often.
3. Pick a good group member and work with them on every assignment. It makes things so much easier
4. Sometimes he randomly calls on someone who he thinks "looks like you are thinking something!" and asks you to provide an insight from the class. Good luck.
5. He will randomly ask a question and announce that whoever answers it gets extra credit. I have no idea how he tracks extra credit, so I doubt it means anything. Once again, vibes grading.

While the content was fairly interesting, most of what is taught is his ideas and his papers. Writing my final paper was very hard; I had a hard time finding multiple sources to write a coherent research paper based on real evidence rather than speculation. I found that to be a very common theme throughout this course — most of it was observation and speculation (which, granted, can be powerful), but it is hard to make a strong argument from that. He took very long to grade papers (we got our first grade by mid-April. Mid. April!!!), and the course expectations/syllabus/schedule were really hard to follow and were everywhere. Mid-term was pretty much a history exam. Honestly, this class should be a history class because we ended up doing very little writing. We never read any books, discussed multiple perspectives, or really did anything that a typical English class would do. The topics were interesting, but definitely need to be restructured because every class felt painfully long and like we were being lectured at (and randomly called to give an "insight").