Gold
Silver[ENGL W4901] History of the English Language
Departments: English and Comparative Literature
Professors: David Yerkes
I agree with the review below this one. While Yerkes is by no means a pleasant--or even an organized--man, there are significant up sides to the course and the man teaching it. First is the workload. Our exam's cancelled and there were only three short written assignments, all in all very manageable. Of the six courses I'm taking, Yerkes' hardly feels like a course.
Now I do not recommend the course for someone who wants a broad overview of the history of the English language. Yerkes likes to skip around, pick on minute topics he's interested in, etc. By the last class, we only got as far as Shakespeare's sonnets. I myself knew a little about the topic, so I was able to benefit from Yerkes' insights. His ideas, abrasive though they may be, challenged how I view this field greatly. For example, I learned that Chaucer had no long vowels or iambic pentameter, there are many things about Shakespeare's language that scholars still do not understand, manuscripts aren't the easiest thing to browse through, and so on.
Lastly I want to give those considering his course a headsup. This man is very picky about what he wants to read. What he likes to read is anything that's not BS, anything with substance, an idea. Not that it's a bad thing. Throughout the semester Yerkes gave me a newfound appreciation of clarity and brevity.
I'll end by saying that David taught me a lot about life, and man's place in the universe, and writing and shit...oh and I did learn something about that history of the English language.
Like I said, extremely light. Hardly any work on most weaks. Some reading that you'll soon realize you can do without. A typical assignment should take no more than one or two hours. You mostly go to class listening to Yerkes pontificating on a topic or tangent of interest to him. Grading can be erratic though, but I hear he rarely gives below a B-.
No bullshit.
Yerkes cuts the games and calls a lot of the whole act for what it is. This can seem abrasive but I (without realizing it before) had been waiting the whole of my schooling for someone to sit there and tell me to cut the crap. Yerkes will hold you accountable for what you say and what you write.
To be really cliche but true, you will get out of the class what you put into it. The paper assignments have the ability to transform old ways of writing, thinking, and arguing, or you could throw something together the night before, though Yerkes will probably call you on it, read it to the class, and call you naive (*no names in the read-aloud but they can be amusing). In sum, for me it really was one of the best courses I've taken at Columbia.
Depends on how much work you put into the assignments - entirely at your discretion but I would advise giving them time. It could make this course one of the few that you actually learn something lasting from.
STAY AWAY. Terrible. I have no words (no thanks to Yerkes for improving my vocabulary) to describe my frustration in this class and with this detestable man. I am actually dropping the class because it is such an incredible waste of time. Any major worth her salt could do this work gagged, blindfolded, and asleep (which I nearly was in every single session). I thought I would get some insight into how language changes, how words are formed, and how things work, maybe some theoretical background; instead, I got Yerkes being an ass for an hour and a half while using that entire class period explaining how to look something up on the online OED. He thinks he knows more than anyone about anything and he is wrong, wrong, wrong. But what really did it for me was when he ridiculed Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf. If you don't know poetry, don't talk to me about language.
Very light with very stupid assignments sprinkled in.
As the other reviews will show, he can be a very polarizing professor. Some people love him and speak in class on a regular basis. Many others didn't even show up. Yerkes spends the period speaking coherently on one subject of the English Language but there was very little structure in his lectures or for the subject matter of the class.
The papers are really the only basis for your grade in the class. This can be frustrating: the papers have an abstract topic and he deliberately withholds any and all guidance on the papers. Mostly, he told us he just wanted us to "think"; no research, no regurgitating information in class. It's very arbritrary. No matter how thorough your paper is, it's really impossible to say what grade you'll get on it.
All in all, not a terrible class. Almost no reading, which is nice for an Enlgish major. But you've got to be able to write well, and work with very little help from the lectures or readings.
Papers, lots and lots of papers. Reading is completely optional and not particularly heavy.
NEVER TAKE A CLASS WITH DAVID YERKES. This class was the bane of my semester. There was no syllabus. He had no lesson plan. The topics we discussed in class had no relation to the course description. I actually did not think it was possible to learn so little in a class. And I don't buy his pretentious claim that he was teaching us "to think": all classes should do that, but you first need some MATERIAL to work with.
His contempt for undergraduates is painfully obvious. The assignments were on the scale of linguistics thesis projects. He was basically so full of himself and so unwilling to have patience for us that he put practically no effort into teaching the class, and we learned correspondingly little. If you ever think of taking a class with David Yerkes because the course title looks interesting... please, please, at all costs, don't. This class was a sinister waste of time.
I don't understand those people who think he's "brilliant." They must like having absolutely NO structure or substance in their classes.
In the beginning, he told us there would be a short paper every week and three exams... but because the syllabus was literally a blank piece of paper, he cancelled two of the exams, made up the first few writing assignments on the spot, and turned the rest of the small papers into two gigantic investigations of the technical aspects of Shakespeare and Chaucer. I spent 60 hours on the first of those alone.
By the end of the semester I couldn't bring myself to listen in lecture, as he dedicated this time to railing against the few authors he sort of assigned us to read. But if you don't go to lecture, you might miss a giant 60-hour assignment.
Yerkes is out of his mind. Papers every two weeks, arbitrary grading, unfunny pontification blended with generalized and sweeping statements he knows nothing about, and quirky old school ranting. He says he wants you to think, but what he wants are lemmings.
Insane 1200 word papers every two weeks with no expectations or direction that leads to frustration and pain.
yerkes is a brilliant man who takes no bullshit. he encourages his students to explore the abilities of their minds -- not their abilities to furiously scribble incoherent notes for two hours. his class is as stimulating as it is entertaining. the material is exciting, and he is absolutely engrossing, but without taking himself too seriously. he knows that learning is supposed to be enjoyable.
simply, yerkes reminds me of why i wanted to go to college in the first place.
as much or as little as you choose to make it. yerkes isn't going to force you to do anything. he respects his students enough to give them the freedom to make their own choices, and not to coddle them. as a result, you'll find that you WANT not only to do the work, but to go above and beyond his expectations.
Flat out awesome. No pressure of grades here, just the pleasure of learning.
First, a warning - I took this class many years ago (I'm an alumna who stopped in to see how my favorite professors are holding up), and so my information may be out of date and less useful. But I doubt it. Other reviewers are correct, you either love Yerkes or hate him, and you either find his lectures hilarious and illuminating or abusive and disorganized. In the interests of full disclosure, I loved him, and found this course very interesting and useful. He definitely appeals to a hard-core geeky element in the English language and literature crowd, and I would recommend the course (and taking it seriously) highly for anyone with an interest in doing work in Old or Middle English. However, for those indicating that he is a soft grader and that this is a lightweight, gut course, be warned - he is well aware that it is considered so, and every few years he gets fed up with people coasting through his class and turns on them. What this course actually teaches, for those who want to know, is the Oxford medieval literature graduate-level philology curriculum. I only realized this when I sat down to take the philology qualifying exam myself and discovered that it was a David Yerkes final. (And, based on this is course even more than my graduate tutorials in the subject, I did very well thank you, and thank you Prof. Yerkes.)
Light, as I recall.
A comical man. Alternatingly grumpy and cheerful, abrasive and sunny, you never know what's going to happen. I don't think he necessarily does either ... Be warned: History of the English Language is neither a History nor an English language course. Actually, Yerkes's goal seemed to be to train us to do low-level linguistic analyses on our own. That is, if he actually had a goal at all...
Ight in-class exams which require no studying. Yes, that means that 25% of the class meetings are used to take exams.
Directory Data
| Dept/Subj | Directory Course | Professor | Year | Semester | Time | Section |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ENCL / ENGL | ENCL ENGL W4901: History of English Language | David Yerkes | 2012 | Fall | TR / 7:10- 8:25 PM | 1 |
| ENCL / ENGL | ENCL ENGL W4901: History of English Language | David Yerkes | 2010 | Fall | TR / 6:10- 7:25 PM | 1 |
| ENCL / ENGL | ENCL ENGL W4901: History of English Language | David Yerkes | 2009 | Fall | TR / 6:10- 7:25 PM | 1 |
| ENCL / ENGL | ENCL ENGL W4901: History of English Language | David Yerkes | 2008 | Fall | TR / 6:10- 7:25 PM | 1 |
| ENCL / ENGL | ENCL ENGL W4901: History of English Language | David Yerkes | 2005 | Spring | TR / 6:10- 7:25 PM | 1 |