I could not agree more with the post below. While I am currently taking Professor Mullen for a different course (American Poetry 1945-Present), I could not be more disappointed. Professor Mullen does not teach, she merely requires that students sign up to present 3 times over the course of the quarter, thus exempting her from lecturing. Her classes are unstimulating and "taught" based off of peer interpretation of texts that are irrelevant to the course.

I signed up for this course eager to study the transition in poetry from the '40s and '50s (beat poetry! Frank O'Hara!) only to be THOROUGHLY disappointed in our reading selections. If I wanted to take a contemporary poetry class, I would have signed up for it. Unfortunately Professor Mullen (a contemporary poet herself) doesn't take the catalog description to mind when assigning poetry selections that are dominated by current poets and required readings from the early 2000s on. The only 2 exceptions to this were Gary Snyder's "Turtle Island" (1975)and Mary Oliver's "American Primitive" (1983) - 30+ YEARS after 1945, the listed starting point for the course! I'm so tired of professors teaching according to their own interests instead of catalog course guidelines.

DO NOT TAKE MULLEN unless you enjoy disorganization and LAZY "teaching" or absence of.