Review:
Prof. Sharpe is an incredibly intelligent and enthusiastic professor who is very concerned with engaging her students and is always readily available outside of class. Her syllabus, as someone else mentioned, does indeed change. But I see this as a very positive quality, because the reason that it changes is that she takes into account how much the class is learning the material, what they are interested in, and how best to teach it. While the syllabus does change, she does this to CUSTOMIZE her style to best fit her class. To me, that is more effective than simply having a pre-set syllabus that is inflexible to student needs and understanding of the material. Also, in my experience, the changes are not difficult to follow provided that a student comes to class on a fairly regular basis.

Since the class is named "American Women Writers" she centers it around the idea of: What is American? The course is based around the idea of race and gender simply because "American" and "Women" in the title structure it to be so. Prof. Sharpe questions us: Who gets to be called "American"? We read texts by Filipina-American authors, Latina-American authors, African-American authors and White American authors. It's a broad range of texts where all voices - minority and majority - are represented. The course, to reflect America itself, is necessarily multicultural.

This won't be a passive, sit there and take notes class. She likes to engage her students and get everyone talking. For this reason, she often offers counterpoints to our own views - playing devil's advocate so to speak - regardless of what side we take. I don't feel that she thrusts her views on us, but rather, she forces us to re-examine our own views and come to our own conclusions. In one particular class I can think of, very few people were talking, so she stopped class, and we had a round table discussion where we discussed and dissected our opinions of the book: What do we think of it? Why do we feel this way?

Most importantly for me, this class mixes analysis with real life. We don't just look at the literary aesthetics of the book and what this mean (i.e. what this metaphor tells us). Rather, we go closely to the text, examine its message, dissect it, and then ask: but why is this important? What does this mean now in 2004 in society as we know it today.

As a person with a very sparse background in race and gender studies, I have found that I learned so much more in this class than I have in other classes comparatively at Tufts. I came into this class expecting the typical women are oppressed, they can't vote, lets look at The Awakening attitude (Don't get me wrong, I liked the Awakening). But I came out of it with so much more. If I weren't a second semester senior, I would without a doubt take another class with Prof. Sharpe.

Workload:
Everything was straightforward and typical. One book per week with a 1 page response paper for each book. Two papers.

review a class you took with Christina Sharpe - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
Prof Sharpe is the most wonderful professor in the English department. She is thoughtful and insightful and knows the material well. She encourages us to debate in class and is respectful of other views. She chooses books that she knows will touch her class in many ways and make her class ask questions about the world in general.

Workload:
Assignments were good and straightforward.

review a class you took with Christina Sharpe - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
She is wonderful. Very concerned with her student's progress, how involved and interested we are in the class, and how much we are taking away. She structures the class according to our needs, promotes discussions (and often debates), and is available outside of class.

Workload:
Typical - 2 papers per semester, 1 page response papers for each book we read. We can write about whatever reaction we had to the book in the response papers. Like she says, it's our RESPONSE.

review a class you took with Christina Sharpe - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
First things first: Prof. Sharpe is an intelligent and thoughtful professor. However, that did little to make her class worthwhile for me. First, her syllabus is 'organized' by week rather than date, and changes frequently making it very difficult to follow what is going on. Second, and most importantly to me, 'tolerant of alternative views' is definitely not a way in which I would describe her teaching. She has a correct opinion, and simply talks over anyone who tries to offer their own opinion if it differs from hers in any discernable way. This, along with her formal manner and continuous efforts to stay "PC" make the class very surface level even when it deals with controversial and dense subject matter.

People who should take this class: People who orient themselves to the world in terms of race (would agree that "Into the Wild" was a book about race) or gender, like to use air quotes, or are the stereotypical real airy English major.

People who shouldn't take this class: People who like to get into debates, or people who are more analytical.

Workload:
N/A

review a class you took with Christina Sharpe - help your classmates make informed decisions!