ANTH 3480

Danzinger is willing to help, pretty fair, and is really passionate about what she is teaching. Material is interesting. I made it out with a B+, only because the few tests and final were a bit tricky.

In this course professor Danziger uses the history of Classical Maya civilization to illustrate principles of theory and methodology in historical (diachronic) linguistics. If you have taken a number of linguistics courses before this class will be enjoyable and pretty easy, but for me it explained some things a little more clearly. Danziger is really enthusiastic and a good lecturer, and she always tries to make course material relevant and accessible -- something to be appreciated for this class, especially for those who don't have much love for linguistics. Readings are light and rarely dense; if you attend lecture (semirandom quizzes make up your attendance grade) you shouldn't have a problem on tests and homeworks, which make up the rest of your course grade. A good choice for the Historical Linguistics requirement or an elective.

Danziger is a clear speaker and has an encouraging tone — perfect for being a linguistics professor. I think the issue with this course is that it is ambiguously advertised. With a title such as Language and Prehistory following an ANTH abbreviation, you really don't know what to expect: you don't know if the class will focus more on the cultural aspect or if it will lean more towards linguistics, but luckily for you, dear reader, I can shed some light.

Quite simply, I would re-title this course as Historical Linguistics and Language Reconstruction Within the Context of Mayan Civilization. Yes, it's extremely long, but it's all there in a nutshell. Danziger is a Mayanist and you can bet she will use her area of expertise to teach you what the comparative method aims to do. Three homework exercises, one midterm, one final. She does random attendance checks with a question from the readings, but these won't hurt your grade too much. Just show up.

I took this course without having taken any intro level to linguistics, but don't make my mistake. Either take the class because you really, really love the content, or take an intro course first.

I personally hated this class. From the course title, I expected a class on historical linguistics, but instead got a class that was almost entirely based on the Mayan civilization. If you're interested in Mesoamerica and prehistory, then this class will be great...if not, then you'll have to suffer through reading about the Mayan dress and family structure..completely irrelevant to linguistics. I didn't mind when material about the Mayans overlapped with linguistics though. Just keep this in mind if you choose to take this class.

Very interesting class- caused me not to take language so much for granted. Prof. Danziger likes her subject, but her lectures are sometimes disorganized. Discussion was pointless - seemed that the TA knew no more on the subject than we did. Reading amount is reasonable, tests are easy, and the group project is largely pointless but not difficult. I would recommend if you are interested in the differences between languages.