ENWR 1510

When I took the class it was called "Religion in America," but I think he wants to make the course more about religion and race in America. Like most ENWRs, there was a lot of reading. I wasn't particularly interested in religion going into this class (I'm a little more interested after this class), so I found some of the readings to be quite boring. However, most were fine, and several were very engaging. The best part of this class is Ard himself. He was super nice, enthusiastic, and is passionate about the subject. He definitely made this class more enjoyable. He's a fantastic teacher, and my writing improved a LOT with this class. He's also not a strict grader and is very flexible about where you take an assignment. I think if you're looking for an ENWR where you can be more creative, and you're interested in race or religion or both, this is the class for you. Assignments were 3 papers, some reading responses, some readings with no responses, and the final project was an outline.

I chose this class because it was one of the few that were being offered in person this semester. The topic of this ENWR was "Race, Religion, and Democracy," which I found interesting to read about but incredibly difficult to write about at times, so in choosing an ENWR that's something to keep in mind. This class is a huge amount of work. I don't know if it's just because we didn't have a spring break this semester, but I was so exhausted by the end of the course. There is a lot of weekly reading which isn't horrible, but the timelines for the papers and projects seems so short and high stress. There are three papers throughout the semester, and the last is an 8-10 page research paper. We also didn't do any sort of revisions on our papers this year, which I was under the impression that the whole point of ENWR was to revise and get better at writing, but I don't feel like that was my personal experience in this class. I think Ard is a good professor, but at times it could feel like he forgot this was a required intro level course not just for English majors. There are much easier ENWRs elsewhere, but if you genuinely like writing about this topic and have a grasp on how to do it well, then I'd imagine it's not too bad. It's not hard to get a decent grade (A/B range), it's just a lot of work to get through and makes for a long semester.

Prof. Ard is such a great teacher. The class is really intimate and encourages personal discussion, so it doesn't feel so stiff and rigid. I was a part of the class that explored domesticity and despite the banality of some readings, I really gained greater insight into domestic life and came to understand myself better in being a part of this class. You only have to write a handful of papers, many of which are about 3 pages long, as well as weekly reading and responses and class discussion. I highly recommend this class -- he's great!

I loved this class! Professor Ard is an incredibly kind person who truly cares about each student. He graded very fairly and gave detailed feedback on each of our papers. My ENWR was about domesticity and I feel like I've learned a lot about the home and how domesticity has multiple meanings. The only thing I would suggest is a little more organization with the syllabus because the weekly blog (which would tell us class plans for the week) was usually different from the syllabus. We also usually had weekly discussion posts on weekly readings, but sometimes there wouldn't be an announcement about it, so I would forget to do it. He was very gracious in accepting discussion posts later than the due date, though, which was much appreciated!