I am leaving this review because I always think about this class. I never liked The Canterbury Tales before this class and I don’t honestly see more value to it now, but I did enjoy reading them because of this class. Fisher is very helpful when it comes to comprehension and advanced analysis instead of focusing on the racism and sexism that is present. He doesn’t dismiss the racism and sexism, ut encourages us to work more with the language and what it does for the story and the audience, which is much more interested.

There are frequent quizzes and the discussions are interactive so you want to have a fairly good handle of each assigned tale before class. His office hours are helpful.

Overall a challenging class but I would take it again it I had to take something with something as difficult for me to engage with as CT.

Each class, you will read one of the Canterbury Tales and discuss. There was the translation project and the midterm essay that took place around the middle of the quarter, with the translation project a nearly guaranteed A, and the midterm essay much harder. Apparently the skew of grades for the essay was mostly Bs, so it is not a walk in the park exactly. The readings are quite long and close reading skills are very necessary as both the midterm and the final essay are entirely comprised of close reading analysis and one is 4-5 and the other is 8-10 pages long. Office hours are perhaps necessary to succeed at least to bounce ideas off the professor who will give you a good idea if you're headed in the right direction. That being said there is a lot of creative freedom with the essays if you're into that sort of thing.

Lectures are fun and funny and Professor Fisher is engaging!

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.