Right off the bat, I have to say that Fisher is a very harsh grader. My TA gave me As or A-s for all my assignments, including the first essay, "gallery assignment" (which is basically choosing and explaining a series of images), and final, but because Fisher graded my second paper and gave it a C, my final grade in the class became a B+.

That said, he's a very enigmatic and very intelligent professor. His lectures aren't boring even though he does go off on tangents at times, you learn a lot. I cannot stress enough that going to class is essential. Everything in the final exam requires that you understand what Fisher has said about the readings.

The absolute worst of the worst. His addiction to coffee took priority over his professorial responsibilities and obligations. As if the course's incomprehensibly complex concepts weren't strenuous enough, his embracement of caffeine preceded his writing any of the discussed terms or ideologies. Upon the one rare incident he placed his beverage down, he interrupted lecture in dire search of it. This made the class all the more painful when the subject material predates Shakespeare & friends and is in all but modern English. To top it all off, he lectured at an insanely rapid speech rate.

Professor Fisher was at first very charming and engaging. However, my impression of him soon changed when it came time for papers.

Besides the fact that he had a reader grade most papers, he was also a terrible tyrant when it came to paper ideas. If you would throw out a paper topic at him, he would say, "Hmmm..." and then ramble about how the paper was weak and how it needed to be fixed. The thing is that he wouldn't tell you WHAT needed to be fixed. He would simply go on and on until he confused you to the utmost, and then you would be left with him telling you to find the solution. So office hours were an utter waste of time.

He was also extremely slack with grading. He gave short quizzes, but he would take 2 weeks to get them back, and the last quiz was never returned (though we took it in 7th week).

He also lectures by asking big questions, and when people participate, he keeps pressing them to clarify certain parts. If you say something stupid or which he THINKS is stupid, he will say, "hmmm" and then immediately call on someone else.

The Canterbury Tales with this man is not a class I would suggest to take. He also tends to favor certain students.

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 pedant but he does absolutely know what he's on about. I personally really liked his lectures and learned a lot. And if you tell him you don't like something about the class' direction, he'll work to change the class and make it better. Also, he's surprisingly lenient with absences. If you really need to skip class or get an extension, he'll give it to you, no questions asked, which is surprising because at first he seems so serious.

Professor Fisher has a fair degree of knowledge within the field of medieval literature, however he treats certain students incredibly condescendingly, with precedent of expressing derision of mockery towards them in class for asking questions he considers too basic. Professor Fisher also struggles to effectively explain or couch core concepts to the English discipline like how to do a close reading or analyze/read Middle/Old English texts with students in office hours who are struggling with the course. He also generally has a disorganized lecture style. In general, Professor Fisher may be knowledgable about his specialization, but his professional demeanor and inability to effectively support students who are new/not naturally adept at tackling core texts/questions in the field decisively limits his capacity as an educator. Various students I know who took courses with him, alongside myself, found his teaching style to be discouraging, ineffective, and at times patronizing. Truly, raw knowledge is not at all enough to make one an effective or even respectful instructor, particularly for non-traditional and commuting students like myself and peers who succeeded in spite of him.

I did not expect to enjoy or do well in this class because medieval literature is very challenging for me but Professor Fisher understands how students feel about this kind of material and makes things manageable and engaging. This was after a year online and he was very understanding about that as well. There was a creative project which was fun to do and helped with the understanding of the material, and then essays which were fairly graded. When you have to take a medieval literature class, I recommend taking it with Fisher.

I did not expect to enjoy or do well in this class because medieval literature is very challenging for me but Professor Fisher understands how students feel about this kind of material and makes things manageable and engaging. This was after a year online and he was very understanding about that as well. There was a creative project which was fun to do and helped with the understanding of the material, and then essays which were fairly graded. When you have to take a medieval literature class, I recommend taking it with Fisher.

The previous Bruinwalk reviews made me nervous to take this class, and for the most part I found them accurate. Fisher is an engaging and often funny lecturer (he no longer holds a coffee cup), and he is approachable in office hours. The final exam and Middle English quiz are also straightforward; they are really not trying to trick you. However, the TAs are much more lenient with grading than Fisher; if he happens to grade your paper, he will most likely give it a C. I'm not sure what you can do to avoid this; I went to my TA's and Fisher's office hours before every assignment to talk about my ideas before I started writing, but I also suspect my TA graded my papers. Discussions were very short (50 mins) and we mostly practiced writing specific parts of an essay (introduction, body paragraph, conclusion) in groups. In terms of specific assignments, the Gallery Project consists of finding and presenting objects related to one text (it's basically making a museum exhibit on Google Slides). The grade distribution was: first paper (4 pages): 20%, Middle English Quiz: 5%, second paper (5-6 pages): 25%, Gallery Assignment: 15%, final: 15%, weekly Reading Responses (short paragraphs): 5%, and discussion participation: 15%. The final had 3 parts: identification, where you were given about 10 quotes and had to identify 3 Old English and 3 Renaissance quotes with the name, author, year published, and significance of the quote; a close reading essay (you are given a passage from one of the texts); and a long essay where you choose between two prompts about broad themes that Fisher has discussed throughout the quarter and use 3 texts to answer it, one of which must be Paradise Lost. KEEP UP WITH THE READINGS! It will benefit you greatly for the identification part of the final, and the long books of Paradise Lost do unfortunately occur in the last week before finals. Overall, this class required the most work simply in terms of the volume of texts we had to read (note: you do not have to absorb much of History of the Holy War or other strictly historical texts; for those Fisher often spent most of lecture going over historical context rather than the actual text). Personally, English literature to 1700 was not my favorite topic as an English major, but in hindsight I'm glad that I read some of the texts, and it helped me understand that people before 1700 were also just people. Seek out help from your TA and Fisher for the papers, and make friends in your discussion.

I wasn't crazy about the readings for this class, but there are very few people who actually like literature from this era. Professor Fisher is one of those few. His lectures are engaging and he's funny, but I agree with the comments calling him pretentious. I personally can't stand when professors are annoyingly condescending all the time so I avoided going to his office hours (although I know others who did had positive experiences with him one-on-one) and just went through my TA. He is definitely a harsh grader, so if you have one of your essays graded by him instead of your TA, good luck preparing for the final. The Middle English quiz was easy, but it counts for so little of your grade that it hardly even matters. The final was the most stressful three hours of my life. I'm glad I passed this class but it definitely tanked my GPA. If you can avoid taking this class with Fisher, do it. But if not, good luck.