This class was very hard. The lectures were very scattered and I am not sure that I got very much out of them. The papers were also graded extremely difficultly, and I felt that even though I was improving on the criticisms the TA had for my last assignment, there was a new thing wrong with the next one. They don't really teach you what they want out of your papers exactly. Grading is tough.

On the other hand, the material that we had in the class was good, and the workload was manageable. I enjoyed reading for this class, and I did (somehow) manage to scrape by with an A-. Barely. With a lot of effort.

Also, please note, that many of the reviews here that rave about this professor show that they haven't taken any courses with him, so take them with a grain of salt. I'm sure that he is a great guy, I don't doubt that, but as a teacher of Comparative Literature? There is quite a bit wanting.

DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. Professor Shideler is "cool" and all, but this is a waste of your time. He's really disorganized, he doesn't really teach. I very much regret taking this class. Not to mention, my TA is the most pretentious, pedantic person I have ever encountered. You will spend a lot of your time analyzing books and poems and still find that you are receiving poor grades on your papers. They don't really show you how to write, they just expect you to. I was not expecting this class to be so awful. Do yourself a huge favor and do not take this class. I know there are a lot of "good" reviews, but don't ignore the bad ones like I did.