[INAF U6367] Global Urbanism

Saskia Sassen is a pretty big deal, and she's taught a few classes by now, so I was a little surprised not to find any reviews of her.

I took Global Urbanism with Professor Sassen, after a few years of wanting to take a class - any class! - with her. Professor Sassen is clearly a very, very intelligent woman. She writes like she speaks, and her writing is detailed and nuanced. She mixes theory with quantitative empirical analyses in a rather beautiful fashion. But would I take this class again? I don't know, and probably not for the professor. (I have a feeling she'd be much better in a smaller seminar.)

The two-hour "seminar" (of 80+people....about 40 by the end of the term were attending lectures) was divided into 1 hour of lecture, and about 50 minutes of discussion in sections. The TAs (Rachel, Elif, and Rajiv) were great - I'd take a class with any of them - but the discussions, which were supposed to be closer examinations of the readings, only sometimes yielded greater insight into the texts. Reviewing for the midterm and final really drove home how rich some of the readings were, but I wish we'd done more with them in class (except for maybe once or twice the lectures seemed pretty far from the readings). I have some friends who thought the class was a waste of time, but I disagree -- I think there was plenty to get out of it, and I just wish that the professor/TAs had been able to make the class fit together more coherently. I generally feel pretty unsatisfied.