ANTH260 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Laura Gilchrest ANTH260 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/17/2023	She is incredibly disorganized, and she does not have any sort of outline that details what assignments we will have to do or even a general timeline for when assignments will be due, so suddenly a writing assignment pops up during the last two weeks of classes without any warning even though you're already juggling assignments for your other five classes. This pop-up style of assigning is genuinely a jumpscare, and I don't recommend this class at all. Attendance in class is mandatory and measured with Point Solutions, which basically doesn't let you check in to the class until you're basically in the classroom. She is also pretty rude to students, and there were a couple of times throughout the semester where she talked to the class like we were in middle school. The content of the class is interesting, her teaching style is just very stressful.
Aryn Schriner ANTH260 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/06/2022	Aryn is an amazing instructor when it came to ANTH260. I had only taken ANTH to satisfy a GENED, but the class ended up being a lot more than that. ANTH260 has a lot of information that I had not really known about or done extensive research on. So discussing it with a class was really enjoyable and the discussions proved to be really interesting. Aryn is extremely understanding, and offer zoom and online recordings in the case you miss class. I will say the class itself does require a bit of outside reading but thats not that bad if you are good at managing time. Other than that, I would highly recommend taking ANTH with Aryn, despite it being their first time, they did extremely well. They made the class extremely interesting!
Jana Kopelentova Rehak ANTH260 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/30/2022	She is a very sweet person and is clearly passionate about anthropology which makes the class more enjoyable. However, the assignments didn't often match up with what was being taught in lecture which was a bit confusing and is the reason why I'm not giving her 5 stars. Otherwise though, the readings were interesting to me but I have had a prior interest in anthropology. They can be long but I feel that is standard with these types of courses. No exams, just essays and written assignments.
Yancey Orr ANTH260 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/08/2020	Orr is generally a good professor. I took this in Fall 2020 (during COVID) and our class was fully asynchronous except for a 50 min discussion session. The asynchronous part made it hard to feel engaged with the class, because I was watching the lectures whenever, and there were no assignments outside of class. Class grade (for this semester, I think it was different pre COVID) was comprised of discussion participation, 1 essay, and 2 exams (1 midterm, 1 final). Because of this, low level of engagement of the class, but lectures were easy to catch up with. Lectures were generally very interesting and engaging. As it's an anthropology course, lectures are filled with examples from around the world which are fascinating, and he often has some dry witty comment to accompany things he discusses. TAs in this class were odd - they were on completely different pages from each other pretty frequently, giving different instructions on the exams and essay. One seemed to grade a lot harder than the other one. Some minor disorganization - final date not announced until close to the end of the semester, and the essay directions were too vague. However, overall a pretty cool class and I'd definitely take it again.
Kevin Gibbons ANTH260 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 06/08/2020	Professor Gibbons was a great professor and made ANTH260 super interesting and incredibly easy. The weekly quizzes are super easy if you do the required readings on the articles. The final was open response and very easy if you understand the material. There was no homework besides the articles. the textbook is unnecessary. AWESOME PROFESSOR
Kevin Gibbons ANTH260 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/12/2020	By far an awesome professor. ANTH260 is already an interesting class but Prof Gibbons made it easy and fun. One quiz per week based on the articles, two observation assignments, one midterm, and the final all of which were pretty easy. Overall great class.
William Stuart ANTH260 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/16/2011	Stuart just stands in front of the room and rambles for 50 minutes. On the rare occasion he actually writes on the board, he draws really obscure pictures or writes illegibly. He will start starting about one subject, completely switch gears, tell a story about his daughter's dogs or the Kiddipas, and he MIGHT eventually get back to his original subject, but probably not. If you ask a question, be prepared for a story that will most likely not answer your question at all. He's like a grandfather who tells the same stories over and over again, but his stories aren't interesting. Lectures are a waste of time, and most of the exam questions come from his handouts (which are terrible and extremely hard to follow). The TAs are your only hope of tying everything together for you. His first exam was easy so he made the second exam hard. I would not recommend taking this class if it is only for a CORE requirement. Or take it with another professor and it might actually be interesting.
William Stuart ANTH260 Expecting an A Anonymous 07/25/2011	Okay so i gave a 5 rating not for his ability to teach but the easiness of the class. So basically the TAs are the shit. literally. Mine was Tanya and she was really awesome and made discussions enjoyable. I went to every discussion but only made maybe a third of lectures. Stuart says "If you are borderline at the end of the semester I will bump you up if you participate in class and come." he's either just really nice or that's just not true because I KNOW that I only could have had at best an 86 or 87 and he gave me an A-. I never spoke up in class and the times i went I played angry birds in the back of the room. I think he may have bumped me up because i would always smile and say hi at the end of class and I emailed him a few times. This has been the only class I've ever blown going to lectures so this really says a lot. There are a few papers your TA grades so it's not too rough. Three exams and a final. The TA's give a study guides and hold review sessions for each exam and i would DEFINITELY recommend going to each one. They will tell you what you need to know if you speak up and ask questions. I owe doing well in this class entirely to those review sessions. I am not an anthropology major so this is unbiased.It really is easy if you take my advice. Anyway I would recommend this class because it was probably my easiest class last semester
William Stuart ANTH260 Expecting a B+ ssherman 05/19/2010	He talked about the Kiddipas (sp?) for the entire semester. The TA's were amazing and pretty smart and they basically saved us all. He never answers your question unless he can answer it with a story about the Kiddipas (sp?). He is a nice person though and you can tell he is really animated about telling stories. I just wish I had learned what I had expected to learn.
William Stuart ANTH260 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/28/2009	Stuart's lectures are hard to follow, for the most part you have to teach yourself or try to piece together what he says. The material is interesting, but I feel as though the same information has been repeated for the past four months. The tests aren't too too hard, and the TA's are pretty good. You'll have to go to lecture- he takes attendence.
William Stuart ANTH260 Expecting an A 2cool4skool 12/26/2008	I got an A- in this class. I only took it as a backup and figured it would be an ez A. It wasn't. Expect a lot of writing and a lot of material on the exams.
William Stuart ANTH260 Expecting a B pluralfacade 05/17/2008	I fell asleep almost every single lecture. He's extremely hard to follow and he always goes off on crazy tangents. He tells lots of stories about his experience with a tribe he lived with; some are mildly interesting. He barely writes notes on the board and when he does they are illegible and ambiguous. Without a solid TA and reading out of his four required textbooks, you won't do well.
William Stuart ANTH260 avigana 11/16/2007	I have nothing personal against Stewart, but just know that if you have him that his lectures are worthless and that you will have to read the textbook in order to keep up with the material. He tells interesting stories in lectures but repeats himself constantly and never goes over material in an organized fashion.

Laura Gilchrest
ANTH260

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/17/2023

She is incredibly disorganized, and she does not have any sort of outline that details what assignments we will have to do or even a general timeline for when assignments will be due, so suddenly a writing assignment pops up during the last two weeks of classes without any warning even though you're already juggling assignments for your other five classes. This pop-up style of assigning is genuinely a jumpscare, and I don't recommend this class at all. Attendance in class is mandatory and measured with Point Solutions, which basically doesn't let you check in to the class until you're basically in the classroom. She is also pretty rude to students, and there were a couple of times throughout the semester where she talked to the class like we were in middle school. The content of the class is interesting, her teaching style is just very stressful.

Aryn Schriner
ANTH260

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/06/2022

Aryn is an amazing instructor when it came to ANTH260. I had only taken ANTH to satisfy a GENED, but the class ended up being a lot more than that. ANTH260 has a lot of information that I had not really known about or done extensive research on. So discussing it with a class was really enjoyable and the discussions proved to be really interesting. Aryn is extremely understanding, and offer zoom and online recordings in the case you miss class. I will say the class itself does require a bit of outside reading but thats not that bad if you are good at managing time. Other than that, I would highly recommend taking ANTH with Aryn, despite it being their first time, they did extremely well. They made the class extremely interesting!

Jana Kopelentova Rehak
ANTH260

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/30/2022

She is a very sweet person and is clearly passionate about anthropology which makes the class more enjoyable. However, the assignments didn't often match up with what was being taught in lecture which was a bit confusing and is the reason why I'm not giving her 5 stars. Otherwise though, the readings were interesting to me but I have had a prior interest in anthropology. They can be long but I feel that is standard with these types of courses. No exams, just essays and written assignments.

Yancey Orr
ANTH260

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
12/08/2020

Orr is generally a good professor. I took this in Fall 2020 (during COVID) and our class was fully asynchronous except for a 50 min discussion session. The asynchronous part made it hard to feel engaged with the class, because I was watching the lectures whenever, and there were no assignments outside of class. Class grade (for this semester, I think it was different pre COVID) was comprised of discussion participation, 1 essay, and 2 exams (1 midterm, 1 final). Because of this, low level of engagement of the class, but lectures were easy to catch up with. Lectures were generally very interesting and engaging. As it's an anthropology course, lectures are filled with examples from around the world which are fascinating, and he often has some dry witty comment to accompany things he discusses. TAs in this class were odd - they were on completely different pages from each other pretty frequently, giving different instructions on the exams and essay. One seemed to grade a lot harder than the other one. Some minor disorganization - final date not announced until close to the end of the semester, and the essay directions were too vague. However, overall a pretty cool class and I'd definitely take it again.

Kevin Gibbons
ANTH260

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
06/08/2020

Professor Gibbons was a great professor and made ANTH260 super interesting and incredibly easy. The weekly quizzes are super easy if you do the required readings on the articles. The final was open response and very easy if you understand the material. There was no homework besides the articles. the textbook is unnecessary. AWESOME PROFESSOR

Kevin Gibbons
ANTH260

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/12/2020

By far an awesome professor. ANTH260 is already an interesting class but Prof Gibbons made it easy and fun. One quiz per week based on the articles, two observation assignments, one midterm, and the final all of which were pretty easy. Overall great class.

William Stuart
ANTH260

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
12/16/2011

Stuart just stands in front of the room and rambles for 50 minutes. On the rare occasion he actually writes on the board, he draws really obscure pictures or writes illegibly. He will start starting about one subject, completely switch gears, tell a story about his daughter's dogs or the Kiddipas, and he MIGHT eventually get back to his original subject, but probably not. If you ask a question, be prepared for a story that will most likely not answer your question at all. He's like a grandfather who tells the same stories over and over again, but his stories aren't interesting. Lectures are a waste of time, and most of the exam questions come from his handouts (which are terrible and extremely hard to follow). The TAs are your only hope of tying everything together for you. His first exam was easy so he made the second exam hard. I would not recommend taking this class if it is only for a CORE requirement. Or take it with another professor and it might actually be interesting.

William Stuart
ANTH260

Expecting an A
Anonymous
07/25/2011

Okay so i gave a 5 rating not for his ability to teach but the easiness of the class. So basically the TAs are the shit. literally. Mine was Tanya and she was really awesome and made discussions enjoyable. I went to every discussion but only made maybe a third of lectures. Stuart says "If you are borderline at the end of the semester I will bump you up if you participate in class and come." he's either just really nice or that's just not true because I KNOW that I only could have had at best an 86 or 87 and he gave me an A-. I never spoke up in class and the times i went I played angry birds in the back of the room. I think he may have bumped me up because i would always smile and say hi at the end of class and I emailed him a few times. This has been the only class I've ever blown going to lectures so this really says a lot. There are a few papers your TA grades so it's not too rough. Three exams and a final. The TA's give a study guides and hold review sessions for each exam and i would DEFINITELY recommend going to each one. They will tell you what you need to know if you speak up and ask questions. I owe doing well in this class entirely to those review sessions. I am not an anthropology major so this is unbiased.It really is easy if you take my advice. Anyway I would recommend this class because it was probably my easiest class last semester

William Stuart
ANTH260

Expecting a B+
ssherman
05/19/2010

He talked about the Kiddipas (sp?) for the entire semester. The TA's were amazing and pretty smart and they basically saved us all. He never answers your question unless he can answer it with a story about the Kiddipas (sp?). He is a nice person though and you can tell he is really animated about telling stories. I just wish I had learned what I had expected to learn.

William Stuart
ANTH260

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/28/2009

Stuart's lectures are hard to follow, for the most part you have to teach yourself or try to piece together what he says. The material is interesting, but I feel as though the same information has been repeated for the past four months. The tests aren't too too hard, and the TA's are pretty good. You'll have to go to lecture- he takes attendence.

William Stuart
ANTH260

Expecting an A
2cool4skool
12/26/2008

I got an A- in this class. I only took it as a backup and figured it would be an ez A. It wasn't. Expect a lot of writing and a lot of material on the exams.

William Stuart
ANTH260

Expecting a B
pluralfacade
05/17/2008

I fell asleep almost every single lecture. He's extremely hard to follow and he always goes off on crazy tangents. He tells lots of stories about his experience with a tribe he lived with; some are mildly interesting. He barely writes notes on the board and when he does they are illegible and ambiguous. Without a solid TA and reading out of his four required textbooks, you won't do well.

William Stuart
ANTH260

avigana
11/16/2007

I have nothing personal against Stewart, but just know that if you have him that his lectures are worthless and that you will have to read the textbook in order to keep up with the material. He tells interesting stories in lectures but repeats himself constantly and never goes over material in an organized fashion.

Reviews for ANTH260