AMST 3001

This is a required class for American Studies majors, but I found the content pretty interesting. Singerman is a great professor who really cares about his students and wants them to do well, and he played a big role in making the class as enjoyable as it was. Classes were mostly 100% discussion - he didn't lecture much at all, instead just helping lead the class with questions. Our class was pretty small (10ish people), so it was nice to get to know my classmates better than usual and he certainly helped with that.
Each week focused on a couple of theoretical questions/topics regarding the field of American Studies and the readings helped support it. There was a lot of heavy reading that a lot of times took a while to digest the information. Assignments consisted of a 3-part project on an item from Special Collections, weekly reading responses, and a discussion question on the day's content due before every class. The reading responses make you focus on a difficulty you encountered while doing the reading, which at times was difficult to do (especially for shorter readings which made sense). You also had to write a 100ish word response on every reading/piece of content, which became a lot of work every week. The prompt meant that you had to completely digest the reading, which took a lot more time than the reading for most other classes. Singerman uses specifications grading, which at times I liked but at times I thought a normal grading scale would work better. Overall, though, Singerman is an awesome professor and he is a great choice for 3001.

This was pretty much a writing-only course: there were only two papers no longer than 6 pages each and a reading notebook, from which he would do random checks to make sure students were up to date on their entries. Participation in class was a significant portion of the grade (it was more of a seminar/group discussion than a lecture) and there was a final group presentation at the end of the semester, but the topic was very flexible and the presentation was only a few minutes long. Singerman is a new professor and Spring 2018 was his first semester teaching this course, but even then, he was still a solid professor and his grading wasn't too hard, as long as you put in some effort. The only drawback is this class has a lot of required books/reading, so be prepared to spend a lot of time outside of class doing the hundred-page readings, and then doing the associated journal entries, so that you can participate in class discussion.