Professor
Matthew Fisher
1 of 3
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2025 - Professor Fisher is clearly very well read and knowledgeable about medieval literature. Unfortunately, his mastery over the course content and our readings did little to aid in student learning and success. Overall, my experience in this class was very negative. In what I understand to be a reactionary response to the threat of AI use on written assignments, our grade in this class is primarily determined by our performance on four in-class writing assignments. These assignments have all been extemporaneous close reading responses to either texts that were provided beforehand and questions revealed the day of the exam, or passages from our readings that were provided at the time of the exam. Because these were in-class essays, we had a time constraint of either the regular duration of our lecture or the regular duration of our section (1 hour and 15 minutes or 50 minutes respectively). Our final is in the same format, with the only difference being that we will have slightly more time to complete the assessment. I personally do not feel that it is reasonable or fair to penalize English students out of fear for their theoretical use of AI. Realistically, the majority of English majors value writing for its own sake and are less likely than students in any other discipline to use AI to write on their behalf. In addition to this, writing a paper in response to a text is a process meant to take time and careful thought. A literary response in essay format traditionally requires multiple revisions across at least several days, which is inherently at odds with the format of this class. Perhaps one or two supplemental in-class writing assignments would have been appropriate, but it felt extremely unreasonable to base all of our grade on them. Giving students no other opportunity to express themselves within the class was a detriment to everyone, including students who performed well within the aforementioned criteria. I performed significantly better than many of my peers on these assessments. However, the highest grades I received were on responses where I selected words from the passages almost at random and generated speculative arguments about what they might mean for the text. Professor Fisher’s definition of “close reading” is extremely narrow and particular to his personal preference. We were instructed to keep our readings “as close as possible” to this standard and were specifically penalized for using quotes longer than one or two words in our responses. This obviously places a significant limitation on the scope of a student’s analysis. Although I was rewarded for my work with higher grades, I did not feel as though I was rewarded by the work at all—there was no real analysis of the text, certainly not with any care or faithfulness to the work or the author’s intentions. It is easy to creatively pull a single word out of a passage and argue that it in some way relates to a larger theme that you are aware of exists within the text. This, I would argue, is not a true literary interpretation fit for a core English class within the canon, and produces, at best, a very superficial analysis, and at worst, an entirely fabricated one. I am personally very concerned about AI reliance in academic spaces, and in particular the threat that it presents to the humanities’ integrity. However, my concern is rooted in the fact that the introduction of artificial intelligence to academia is a perpetuation of a long-standing trend towards prioritizing the material products of education over the intrinsic value of learning itself. I would argue that eliminating one of the core aspects of a traditional English education and replacing it with impromptu, timed assignments inadvertently rewards students for their ability to generate an idea and produce a product quickly, rather than their ability to interact deeply with a text. This stifles student expression in the same way AI does and only contributes to the growing homogeneity of academic writing. The multiple ways in which I felt that this class constrained and demanded uniformity of thought and expression from students was more alarming to me than any AI response I have ever read. Putting such constraints on English students poses a far more imminent threat than the use of AI, which is only one of many ways in which a student is capable of robbing themselves of their own education. It seems as though the faculty is concerned with AI use specifically out of fear of rewarding students who use AI with passing grades, which only reinforces the idea that the material product of our education is what matters most. If Professor Fisher was actually concerned with the education of his students, he would put his time and energy into educating his students. I appreciate the effort to ensure academic integrity, and can understand the reasoning behind the recent reforms made to the structure of this class, but I believe that an effective curriculum should invite the range of skill required to be successful and participate in English academia. I feel that at both the classroom and institutional levels, this type of fear-based, poorly thought out solution is entirely counterproductive and discourages students from freely engaging with either the material or their ideas.
Fall 2025 - Professor Fisher is clearly very well read and knowledgeable about medieval literature. Unfortunately, his mastery over the course content and our readings did little to aid in student learning and success. Overall, my experience in this class was very negative. In what I understand to be a reactionary response to the threat of AI use on written assignments, our grade in this class is primarily determined by our performance on four in-class writing assignments. These assignments have all been extemporaneous close reading responses to either texts that were provided beforehand and questions revealed the day of the exam, or passages from our readings that were provided at the time of the exam. Because these were in-class essays, we had a time constraint of either the regular duration of our lecture or the regular duration of our section (1 hour and 15 minutes or 50 minutes respectively). Our final is in the same format, with the only difference being that we will have slightly more time to complete the assessment. I personally do not feel that it is reasonable or fair to penalize English students out of fear for their theoretical use of AI. Realistically, the majority of English majors value writing for its own sake and are less likely than students in any other discipline to use AI to write on their behalf. In addition to this, writing a paper in response to a text is a process meant to take time and careful thought. A literary response in essay format traditionally requires multiple revisions across at least several days, which is inherently at odds with the format of this class. Perhaps one or two supplemental in-class writing assignments would have been appropriate, but it felt extremely unreasonable to base all of our grade on them. Giving students no other opportunity to express themselves within the class was a detriment to everyone, including students who performed well within the aforementioned criteria. I performed significantly better than many of my peers on these assessments. However, the highest grades I received were on responses where I selected words from the passages almost at random and generated speculative arguments about what they might mean for the text. Professor Fisher’s definition of “close reading” is extremely narrow and particular to his personal preference. We were instructed to keep our readings “as close as possible” to this standard and were specifically penalized for using quotes longer than one or two words in our responses. This obviously places a significant limitation on the scope of a student’s analysis. Although I was rewarded for my work with higher grades, I did not feel as though I was rewarded by the work at all—there was no real analysis of the text, certainly not with any care or faithfulness to the work or the author’s intentions. It is easy to creatively pull a single word out of a passage and argue that it in some way relates to a larger theme that you are aware of exists within the text. This, I would argue, is not a true literary interpretation fit for a core English class within the canon, and produces, at best, a very superficial analysis, and at worst, an entirely fabricated one. I am personally very concerned about AI reliance in academic spaces, and in particular the threat that it presents to the humanities’ integrity. However, my concern is rooted in the fact that the introduction of artificial intelligence to academia is a perpetuation of a long-standing trend towards prioritizing the material products of education over the intrinsic value of learning itself. I would argue that eliminating one of the core aspects of a traditional English education and replacing it with impromptu, timed assignments inadvertently rewards students for their ability to generate an idea and produce a product quickly, rather than their ability to interact deeply with a text. This stifles student expression in the same way AI does and only contributes to the growing homogeneity of academic writing. The multiple ways in which I felt that this class constrained and demanded uniformity of thought and expression from students was more alarming to me than any AI response I have ever read. Putting such constraints on English students poses a far more imminent threat than the use of AI, which is only one of many ways in which a student is capable of robbing themselves of their own education. It seems as though the faculty is concerned with AI use specifically out of fear of rewarding students who use AI with passing grades, which only reinforces the idea that the material product of our education is what matters most. If Professor Fisher was actually concerned with the education of his students, he would put his time and energy into educating his students. I appreciate the effort to ensure academic integrity, and can understand the reasoning behind the recent reforms made to the structure of this class, but I believe that an effective curriculum should invite the range of skill required to be successful and participate in English academia. I feel that at both the classroom and institutional levels, this type of fear-based, poorly thought out solution is entirely counterproductive and discourages students from freely engaging with either the material or their ideas.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2016 - The course consists of two prompt-free essays, a Middle English translation quiz, participation in section, the final, and a "gallery project" (which was new to this quarter). The gallery project was a huge pain in the butt for three reasons: there wasn't a lot of direction so we didn't really know what was expected of us, he kept admonishing us to "have fun with it!", and because we were working on this post-thanksgiving and pre-finals -- while reading Paradise Lost. Tip: get a serious head start on PL during earlier weeks (yeah, I know) so you don't end up reading Milton for 4 hours the night before the final. The final was not nearly as bad as I expected. It was three parts: ID, explication, and long essay. For the ID section, Fisher gave us 10 quotes, we had to write on 6 of them: title, author, original language, date written, and importance of the quote. They were from pretty obvious works and I easily recognized 9 of them. No sweat. The explication essay was straightforward too; we were presented with a poem and performed a close reading. The long essay afforded the most room for creativity. There were two open-ended prompts, we picked one, and answered it using three texts. Fisher required that Paradise Lost be one of those three. Both prompts were interesting, fit well with many of the texts we'd read, and I actually had a lot of fun writing this essay. My advice for this class is to complete the readings *before* lecture. If you do this, you'll be able to more easily sift through his summary and take pointed notes on theme and meaning. While reviewing for the final, I realized that on days when I had followed my own advice, my notes were much more helpful than otherwise. Fisher spends a good portion of lecture giving historical background -- this is all useless. It helps to contextualize the readings and place them along a timeline, but it is unnecessary to know for the final or the essays. Pay a bit of attention to this - especially as it relates to framing the themes of works and common motifs - but don't bother writing taking notes on the English Civil War. This may seem like a small thing, but it ended up really bugging me by the end of the quarter. Fisher consistently lectured for longer than the allotted 50 minutes -- never more than five minutes, but long enough that it made getting to my next class difficult.
Fall 2016 - The course consists of two prompt-free essays, a Middle English translation quiz, participation in section, the final, and a "gallery project" (which was new to this quarter). The gallery project was a huge pain in the butt for three reasons: there wasn't a lot of direction so we didn't really know what was expected of us, he kept admonishing us to "have fun with it!", and because we were working on this post-thanksgiving and pre-finals -- while reading Paradise Lost. Tip: get a serious head start on PL during earlier weeks (yeah, I know) so you don't end up reading Milton for 4 hours the night before the final. The final was not nearly as bad as I expected. It was three parts: ID, explication, and long essay. For the ID section, Fisher gave us 10 quotes, we had to write on 6 of them: title, author, original language, date written, and importance of the quote. They were from pretty obvious works and I easily recognized 9 of them. No sweat. The explication essay was straightforward too; we were presented with a poem and performed a close reading. The long essay afforded the most room for creativity. There were two open-ended prompts, we picked one, and answered it using three texts. Fisher required that Paradise Lost be one of those three. Both prompts were interesting, fit well with many of the texts we'd read, and I actually had a lot of fun writing this essay. My advice for this class is to complete the readings *before* lecture. If you do this, you'll be able to more easily sift through his summary and take pointed notes on theme and meaning. While reviewing for the final, I realized that on days when I had followed my own advice, my notes were much more helpful than otherwise. Fisher spends a good portion of lecture giving historical background -- this is all useless. It helps to contextualize the readings and place them along a timeline, but it is unnecessary to know for the final or the essays. Pay a bit of attention to this - especially as it relates to framing the themes of works and common motifs - but don't bother writing taking notes on the English Civil War. This may seem like a small thing, but it ended up really bugging me by the end of the quarter. Fisher consistently lectured for longer than the allotted 50 minutes -- never more than five minutes, but long enough that it made getting to my next class difficult.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2025 - Such a good class and such a caring professor. Also, super interesting. It's clear that Prof Fisher knows his stuff. If you like reading/analyzing literature, you will most likely enjoy this class. The middle English is a little confusing at first, but trust me, you will get the hang of it. He also understands that it's tough and tries to make it enjoyable! Don't be intimidated, just take the class :)
Winter 2025 - Such a good class and such a caring professor. Also, super interesting. It's clear that Prof Fisher knows his stuff. If you like reading/analyzing literature, you will most likely enjoy this class. The middle English is a little confusing at first, but trust me, you will get the hang of it. He also understands that it's tough and tries to make it enjoyable! Don't be intimidated, just take the class :)
Most Helpful Review
Fisher is a great guy...once you get to know him through many meetings. He genuinely cares about the student and is willing to sit for long periods of time discussion issues in the class, his teaching style, and of course, the literature. The thing I respect most of all is his willingness and openness to critique and evaluation. He's fairly new to UCLA. I also had him for 10A (his first quarter here) and I think he learned a lot because when I took 141B with him, I could see vast improvements. His lecture style is a bit odd. He speaks very elaborately, and to be honest, sometimes doesn't even finish his thoughts. I think he gets lost in his tangents. Many times he'll say "And the most important thing to remember is...[insert tangent]..." and will never finish the thought. Despite his tendency to lecture over people's heads, he is brilliant. He's got so much knowledge and passion for Medieval Literature and is the reason why I like to consider myself a medievalist. He's a great guy who cares for his students, has a bit more to learn in terms of being an effective professor, but is all in all one of the most brillian people I know.
Fisher is a great guy...once you get to know him through many meetings. He genuinely cares about the student and is willing to sit for long periods of time discussion issues in the class, his teaching style, and of course, the literature. The thing I respect most of all is his willingness and openness to critique and evaluation. He's fairly new to UCLA. I also had him for 10A (his first quarter here) and I think he learned a lot because when I took 141B with him, I could see vast improvements. His lecture style is a bit odd. He speaks very elaborately, and to be honest, sometimes doesn't even finish his thoughts. I think he gets lost in his tangents. Many times he'll say "And the most important thing to remember is...[insert tangent]..." and will never finish the thought. Despite his tendency to lecture over people's heads, he is brilliant. He's got so much knowledge and passion for Medieval Literature and is the reason why I like to consider myself a medievalist. He's a great guy who cares for his students, has a bit more to learn in terms of being an effective professor, but is all in all one of the most brillian people I know.
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2025 - Hes eccentric, interesting as a lecturer and person but he has a specific way of writing that you need to follow. He can be a bit unclear and doesnt really like nuance, harsh grader. Takes time to understand what he wants, go to office hours and ask where you can exceed in your writing. Wouldn't take again but he's okay.
Winter 2025 - Hes eccentric, interesting as a lecturer and person but he has a specific way of writing that you need to follow. He can be a bit unclear and doesnt really like nuance, harsh grader. Takes time to understand what he wants, go to office hours and ask where you can exceed in your writing. Wouldn't take again but he's okay.
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