The amount of reading Professor Jaurretche assigned for this class for absolutely insane. I would find it hard to believe that anyone is the class was able to complete all the readings in full (and she expected you to read them twice no less).

They also made no sense, we were skipping around between authors with no connection (or a rough connection) and I was often really lost between lectures as she provided little to no background info on the works or the genre or literary eras we were covering.

She wasn't terrible, she provided really in-depth lectures on literary style and techniques, but the 10 series, especially 10C should really have a focus on contextualizing pieces of literature and she ultimately failed entirely to do so, really just giving us a historical overview on Ireland in the 19th century.

Also, her essay feedback is legitimately awful. She gave me a B on my paper with no comments other than "I thought this was well-written and well-organized, but this is not the argument I would have made," which is completely antithetical to the goals of literary analysis.

Would highly recommend not taking a 10 series class with her, but maybe a writing class would be okay.

I was one of the few people in my discussion who genuinely enjoyed attending lecture. She's adorable and a bit eccentric and quite clearly adores teaching. Her lectures tend to be quite lacking in structure, and many of my peers had difficulty ascertaining what exactly they should be taking notes on. My advice would be to make a note of which passages she discusses, as well as paying attention to the important historical contexts or styles/literary devices/themes that she points out.

She is, for the most part, extremely approachable, considerate, and kind. If your paper is randomly chosen to be graded by her, she will be a bit harsh and leave at most two comments. However, you will have 3 short essays (4 pages!) to prove yourself, and the first one will only count 10% of your grade. I found it most helpful to hound my TA when planning my essays.

There is no midterm, and the final is graded more kindly than the essays are. Our final had (if I'm remembering correctly) 17 ID terms, and you only needed to correctly identify 15 of them, with the full title and the writer's full name. There is poetry explication, and then a final long essay in which you are given two "big ideas" and you pick one to write about.

It's definitely very helpful to keep up with the reading, but I'll admit that I fell behind on most of the longer works. Reading detailed summaries and taking really good lecture notes will carry you through just fine.

I really did enjoy this class, though ultimately the most electrifying lecture had been given by one of the TAs. Nevertheless, I would highly recommend taking 10C with Jaurretche!