nice professor, but she grades hard on essays. besides that there is no work in class. its not that bad, but a lot of the content you should already know. also, be sure not to use ai. she uses separate websites to check essays and gave out a lot of F's.

The last two reviews, lol.

Derby's teaching style may have been a bit scattered, but I found it to be part of her charm. Personally, I enjoyed her lectures and found the guest speakers engaging. The research on primary sources was appropriately challenging, keeping me interested throughout. While some students felt the midterm and final papers lacked structure, Derby was always available to guide you towards that A. However, clearer expectations could improve the experience. Although I earned an A, I found her comments somewhat harsh (using odd words to describe a thesis - I was like, huh?). On a positive note, the TA was incredibly helpful, grading fairly, with good feedback. Derby did allow re-writes for the midterm paper (Keep in mind re-write overrides the current grade), which I appreciated as it supported my learning process in "contextualizing" my writing skills for this subject. Despite the critiques, I would consider taking her class again.

This was a decent course. I received an A, and I felt like I worked decently hard for it. The extra credit was great, and was ultimately helpful at the end. However, this course was extremely vague—there was little to no structure, and the syllabus changed several times throughout the course. For an upper division course, I was disappointed in the structure. For someone who struggles with anxiety, I didn’t love this class. I didn’t know what to expect, and struggled with a lack of structure. Most readings didn’t correlate with lecture material, and it seemed that there wasn’t a roadmap for the course at all. Overall, it was interesting and there were some great guest lecturers. But I would keep in mind the lack of structure.

This class is relatively easy, with two essays constituting the entire grade. However, these two essays were extremely vague and the professor's criticisms hardly make sense. Professor Derby is nice but her lectures are unbearable as she bounces from point to point with no real path. Moreover, it is hard to keep up with her lectures as her slides are also similar to her teaching style, making lectures hard to sit through and attend. Overall if you want a class you can ignore besides your two important exams I would take this course.

I took Food in the Atlantic World over the zoom year. Professor Derby is so nice and if you express interest in any topic she'll do what she can to help you out. Her class is pretty much a straight lecture in which she discusses themes from the readings. I encourage you to go to her office hours. There isn't as much opportunity to engage in class, and she's very understanding and helpful if you talk to her in person. There were no tests, it was all paper based, so people that weren't either already into the topic or didn't take time to talk to her about their papers, had a harder time. You definitely need to know how to write a history paper because she grades like an English teacher. I didn't do as well as expected on the first paper so I followed her suggestions to use the History Writing Center for my second paper and I did well (I had never written a history paper before). For the final paper I talked to her in office hours and I did fine. A lot of people were disappointed in what they interpreted as nitpicky grading and this is definitely not a class in which you learn to write. You have to do that on your own. Most of the complaints were from people with high b's and a high b is into actually a bad grade and she won't treat it as a bad grade or raise it for you when you complain. Its an easy class in that you don't need to prove your participation (there was a weekly blog discussion board for that) and you could skip lectures and she gives lots of opportunity for attending talks and getting extra credit. But its hard in that you need to know how to write a good paper on your own- its not the kind of class where you build the paper in class. There is also a lot of reading and you have to use those readings in your papers. I learned a lot about the food exchange in transatlantic trade and I came into the class with a lot of food knowledge. So, it's worthwhile if you're into food history.