Review:
The class is not one of Professor Lane's most interesting. Much of the subject matter concerns French peasants (France was, after all, a country made up mostly of peasants, not that there's anything wrong with that) and not the tour de France and not as much the construction of French nationalism like stated in the course description. Readings and films are both used in the class, but most of the class did not read most of the readings. As for the professor, she truly cares about students and is very knowledgeable. In fact, she was one of the best profs I've had at Tufts. However, the subject material of this class is simply not interesting and I would strongly recommend taking one of her other film or literature courses instead.

Workload:
A book every week (that most of the class did not read) and sometimes a film. Lots of extra handouts that the class usually didn't read either. A midterm and final paper.

review a class you took with Brigitte Lane - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
I have to say that this class has disappointed me. I am a french major and generally enjoy french classes at Tufts. However, I have learned very little in this class. The readings are interesting, but the discussions of them are extremely superficial and add little to the readings. Regions were not covered in an organized or logical manner, and we still have not touched upon several items on the syllabus. The main downfall with this course has been its failure to make a connection from one assignment to the next.

Workload:
2 papers, both quite long, 1 oral presentation (originally 2 were required). The best thing about the papers is that we are allowed to re-write the first one, and Lane's comments are actually quite useful.

review a class you took with Brigitte Lane - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
I am almost certain this last review is from the same person who wrote the first one. Please, don't make a career out of trashing someone - you certainly don't know a thing about being out there in front of a class and teaching.

While I am certain Professor Lane is not perfect, as none of us are, and that she may be tired and forgetful nowadays, I don't think she is the crushing bore you are making of her (to the point of saying you fall asleep in five minutes). As for overindulging, I am speaking out, and with sincerity, of what I felt and what I have experienced in her classes, not out of love for adulation. I graduated two years ago, and I have nothing to gain from praising Prof. Lane's 'overwhelming perfection'. Besides, why and to whom is it overwhelming? Certainly not to me. She was one of my role models, and I am not embarrassed about talking about her merits.

Unless Prof. Lane is radically different from the one I have met two years ago, she is still the same that passes her enthusiasm with her usually calm self. With regards to authentic cultural materials I mentioned, this is also my actual feeling, because she brought articles, films and documentaries into class. Can you say that films, articles from a given country are non-authentic?

The previous commentator may have found there was a pathetic exaggeration of Prof. Lane's merits in my comments; but his/her needless use of lexical snobbery and thus of intellectual pretentiousness sure did their best to go the opposite way...

I should say it should have sufficed that the commentator has expressed his/her opinions in the first review and I have expressed mine, in the second one. There was no need for rebut, unless he/she is feeling one review is not enough to leave his/her opinion sustained...which it wouldn't be, without the viperish insults found in the second one.

Workload:

review a class you took with Brigitte Lane - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
While I appreciate Professor Lane's knowledge and "sweetness," I have to agree that the class does lack energy, and Professor Lane has fallen way behind on the syllabus. This lack of organization has resulted in a decrease of required oral presentations from 2 to 1 (less work for us, but what about grades?) The class is about 20 students, and I've noticed that it is true that even at the end of the semester, she still has issues remembering some students' names. Perhaps she is having a bad semester, but Professor Lane lacks the overwhelming perfection so dazzlingly presented by the previous reviewer.

Workload:
A substantial amount of reading, but only meets once a week. Midterm and Final papers, and an oral presentation.

I would not call most of the material covered in class "alive" and "raw," but some of the readings are enjoyable. Not quite as alive, raw, and enjoyable as the self-indulgent review recently posted, but perhaps slightly more bearable.

review a class you took with Brigitte Lane - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
No one should be penalized for being soft spoken, let alone sweet! This seems to be the case of the (only!)review on Professor Lane that I came across with today; a quite unfair 'review' of someone that claims that Prof. Lane's soft spoken style and sweet personality works (in 5 minutes) like codeine. A soft-spoken person is not, however, necessarily a boring one. In Professor Lane's case, at least, her voice and calm temperament only helped me (and others) feel heard during her classes, when I would feel totally distraught and disoriented with some bombastic professors who were hammering on my brains and ears at the time I was a student there. But whether you find a certain tone of voice stimulating or not is a very subjective matter, and not a fair basis for judgment. A soft voice can be very stimulant to some people.

Furthermore, bringing to attention a preference of Prof. Lane for graduate students is equivalent to not making the slightest effort of acknowledging how impartially kind and altruistic she is to each of her students. When I was there, among other classmates, I didn't hear a word of dissatisfaction regarding her way of treating the students. Quite the contrary, everybody was impressed with how caring and devoted she was, in giving each one individual attention, no matter if it was during office hours or class hours.
Everybody wanted to speak in her classes, whether they were undergraduates or not. She would remember each ones names - and her classes were typically not very small...

I didn't, by the way, see a soul sleeping there either... I who, by the way, I happened to have been someone who took four courses with her in a period of only one year, exactly because her classes motivated me.

Workload:
Professor Lane's readings were in fact very (but not insanely) abundant, and she would in fact many times summarize a book. But it did not get even close to taking most of her class time! Furthermore, it never came to my attention that she sacrificed the analytical part of her classes to book summaries. Quite the opposite, she enhanced the portrayal of a social condition with 'strokes' of book - and many other kinds of - excerpts. And the transition from summary to analysis was so perfectly woven that it would transform an apparently disengaged and complex pile of articles, books and films into a comprehensible and sensitizing body of study. Puzzling pieces of story and history together, making them understandable through that puzzling is the essence of Prof. Lane's workstyle. And, what is more remarkable, she works effortlessly with authentic and updated material about 20th- century France in squeezed 3 weekly hours. With alive, raw, non theoretic material, she combines her natural ability to analyze and summarize. And she fits a world into a classroom.

Before - and way before each of the assignments - Prof. Lane would give us an extensive list of carefully elaborated themes and thesis we would be free to choose from, instead of a couple of vague ones given by other professors, in which we either had to sink or swim. This doesn't mean, however, she was giving anyone crutches - just guiding us through some aspects of a vast sea called post-modern France.

Each question she raised in her assignments were very straightforward, but also very challenging, because, as I have mentioned, they deal with the complex issue of what is France today.

review a class you took with Brigitte Lane - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
Professor Lane is a sweet, soft-spoken woman. In fact, she's so soft-spoken that after the first 5 minutes of class, you're already falling asleep. For a 3 hour class, that's bad news. The class is supposed to be a mixture of literature and cinema, but movies definitely take up a much smaller portion of the class than expected. Instead, most of the time is spent recounting the plot summary of the book we read for that week, never really delving into much analysis, and each week there's a new book. Participation is a big part of the grade, but "discussion" is superficial and lacks energy. Also, unless you're a grad student or knew Professor Lane previously, don't expect her to know your name, even in this relatively small class.

Workload:
Typically one novel (in French) a week, 2 oral presentations and 2 papers over the course of the semester. Meets once a week.

review a class you took with Brigitte Lane - help your classmates make informed decisions!