This was one of my favorite art history courses! Super straightforward and very interesting. Learned so much about Impressionism !

This course is fantastic; I would absolutely recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in Impressionism. I always looked forward to attending Professor Betzer's lectures and the readings, while sometimes a bit dense, were very interesting. The Rubin text provides an especially good background.

I have very mixed feelings about this class... I went in not knowing or caring much about Impressionism. I could now talk about/debate the artistic movement for hours. We approached the subject matter from a variety of interesting perspectives, discussing gender, politics, etc. We covered everything from plein air painting techniques to the renovation of Paris by Haussmann to the traditions of the female nude in great detail. Betzer is very sweet and knowledgable. HOWEVER, she's an incredibly frustrating lecturer. She sounds almost like a broken record, covering the same ideas and paintings over and over again. It sometimes got to the point that everything she said in lecture I already had in previous notes. The readings were long and often hard to get through. There were two essays and two exams but weekly Collab submissions. We only had to know ~60 images for each exam. Betzer liked to choose paintings that weren't really discussed in class so our slide IDs were basically extrapolations that drew upon the ideas and themes we had learned in regard to different (but obviously similar) paintings.

Stay away...seriously. Going to lectures was painful. She may be passionate about the subject, but she makes the interesting subject matter miserable to learn. She had us write a response to a reading. I got a B- on the essay...when I asked her why she said, "this is very beautifully written, but I wanted a summary of the article, not your interpretation." I'm sorry, we are in college...not sixth grade. She makes you hate art history...I feel bad for the people who only take her class and decide to stay away for art history forever. Fortunately, I have taken several classes (in which I have received A's or A-'s as my final grade) so was not completely put off from art history. STAY AWAY!