Principles of Literary Study

I have to agree with the reviewer who complimented her intelligence and organization but also levied a warning. This woman has a deep and wide mean streak in her.

True, Professor Eden is one of the best organized and clearest teachers at Columbia. There's a lot to be said for that. A lot. And she's smart. A word of warning is also in order though, for graduate students. You don't have to push very hard at all in order to get her to remind the class that she reads Greek and you (probably) don't. She has the embarassing habit of attacking graduate students who ask questions for which she doesn't have an easy or immediate answer. Don't be fooled by her pint-sized physical stature. You don't want to be the object of Eden's mocking derision, so after a couple weeks everyone learns to be silent and just take notes, which is how it went for the rest of this somber year-long course.

As another graduate student who took the course, I feel compelled to respond to the previous review of Eden's "Principles of Literary Study," because the person who wrote it obviously had no idea what s/he was doing for an entire semester. Most of the complaints in the previous graduate review are completely unfounded: the course is not intended to be a graduate seminar in the usual sense and it is certainly not intended to be a forum for graduate students' personal readings of the texts. Eden states up front that the course is in lecture format and that the readings are her own. Anyone who understands the purpose of the course attends in order to benefit from Eden's considerable knowledge and experience (which is obviously much greater than that of the previous reviewer). I, for one, did not spend my energy in class working myself into a snit if I disagreed with a particular point; I listened respectfully and then, as an independent thinker and career academic, I felt free to take it or leave it as I saw fit. Given the ultimate purpose of the course, I couldn't ask for anything more -- Eden was knowledgeable, prepared and personable.
Certainly she has an investment in her own readings of the texts, but she never crammed them down anyone's throat (how could she? we're advanced graduate students, and we didn't even write anything for her), and I certainly never saw her practicing "McCarthyite tactics" -- such language says much more about the reviewer than it does about Eden. I can safely say that I would much rather be in one of Eden's courses, however conservative the content...

Kathy Eden is probably a great teacher for undergrads, but graduate students should beware of her control freakiness and intellectual shallowness. Her erudition can seem impressive at first, until it becomes clear that Greek and Latin rhetorical categories presented in September will be trotted out weekly until May. Every literary work ever written must comply with her radically conservative ideas (which are not even hers) and any disagreement will be mocked and crushed. Her intellectual agenda, if that's what it is, involves proving that there has never been anything new under the sun, that no text ever demonstrates a new idea and that you shouldn't either, or else. Every class includes the inevitable presntation of a binary formula--black vs. white, 'community vs. continuity', whatever--but it soon becomes clear that these are just variations of the basic binary of right vs. wrong; if asked, make sure to say that Kathy is right. Discussion is aggressively discouraged in seminar, instead Eden lectures from her notes for two hours non-stop. The content of these lectures is painfully banal; irrelevant facts and uninteresting analysis make two hours seem like eternity. Eden seems incredibly incurious and is actually hostile to any creativity or originality. Worst of all is her McCarthyite tactic of denunciation by innuendo: anyone who disagrees with her or is otherwise an independent thinker will be relentlessly teased and mocked. Eden's "Principles of Literary Study" will send your mind back to junior high school; you can doodle while she babbles or write letters while pretending to take notes. If you are forced to register for this pathetic seminar, it's best to mentally tune-out while physically nodding in agreement.