James Quesada

This guy seems to be a genius. He is a pleasure to learn with, and time in his classroom and spent reading the ton of required material is all very worthwhile. He knows his subjects well and is challenging. He has a wonderful ability to take what seems like a tangent and bring it back to the subject at-hand and relate it in logical ways. Take him!

There is a lot of reading in this class, but they are all very interesting. The manner in which Professor Quesada teaches this class is not very conventional. In order for everyone to truly understand the readings, he assigns each student to facilitate discussions.The discussion were very helpful - especially hearing what other people in different cultural backgrounds had to contribute.I've taken Professor Quesada for several classes and I'm never disappointed. I always know that I have to be prepared to challenge myself whenever I take his class because there is an exorbitant amount of reading and presenting. He is really big on presenting ideas and in this particular class, you get your fair share. He's a wonderful lecturer and genuinely respects other people's opinion - even when they are not in accord with his own.

Professor Quesada is a walking wealth of knowledge ready to explode! He is the best professor I have ever had and has inspired me beyond words. He's not easy, and he challeges your creative and critical ideas so that you can materialize them and make them real. He will never just give you the answers because he encourages people to think and critically analyze every argument. He makes you present ideas to the class so that you can learn to challenge other students' opinons.As difficult as it was, it taut me how to effectively articulate myself in other classes, and helped me to overcome the fear of asserting my opinions in public. He may go off on tangents when he lectures, but it's usually for good reason - he's very passionate about Anthropology (every aspect)and not just about his own endeavors. If you walk away with anything valuable from his class, it should be this: that everything articulates in some way shape and form, and Anthropology harnesses all those collective thoughts and packages it nicely. His biggest emphasis is that Anthropolgy is important because it links so many aspects of human existance, that the knowledge base for understanding humanity is endless. He will ineluctably inspire you to think independently and to always challenge the voice of authority (but not in a narrow minded way). My only regret upon graduation is knowing that I can no longer sit in on his 3 hour lectures. He is a very fascinating lecturer and I can listen to him for hours. The readings can be very intense, but he doesn't expect you to understand it completely; his lectures compliment the readings and he does a very good job of conveying the messages contained within the complex material.The tests are very fair; short answer essays and multiple choice.If you attend all his lectures, you will do well. Almost all of his tests are from his lectures and the readings. Perhaps the biggest credit I could give him is his sincere and general interest in students. He is always willing to listen.You have to be patient with him because he has a very eratic schedule, but he will make time for you and help to give you options you wouldn't have considered otherwise.

I also had Foundations with Quesada. I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt because the class only met once a week. He is an extremely nice man and is very passionate about what he teaches. The only areas he needs to work on are, unfortunately!, a big part of the class. His lectures were incomprehensible to me. I did all the reading and still didn't understand much of what he talked about. The problem is, he's way too abstract himself to be teaching a foudations class, which is already abstract theory. The other area he needs help in is organization. I think if the department provided him with a permanent TA, who was there in class it would benefit Quesada greatly. He definately needs to organize his thoughts and lectures. However, he understands this and grades accordingly. As long as you do the reading the tests shouldn't be bad. He doesn't give a lot of homework. However, you might have to do outside work because the lectures don't help.

Anthro 300 is a very important class for students. We are supposed to learn the foundations to important theories that have influence in the field. I felt rushed and was often times confused. The lectures were not organized and sometimes hard to follow. He could not remember what we had talked about so sometimes we heard the same things over again and other times he would gloss over theories. Quesada did not seem prepared. He rushed through his explanations and if students raised their hands he would act annoyed. I felt like he always rushed out of the classroom so that he could avoid further questions. He was late every Tuesday because he had meetings (this is ridiculous--we pay for this time). The class was neglected for the professors outside responsiblity as the department chair. I feel cheated out of my money and my right to learn. I almost want to retake 300 with someone else so that I can have some sort of confidence in the field. We had to participate in debates. The days could have been better used for further explanations of his lectures. The homework was stupid movie reviews that did not help at all. They were a waste of time. He wrote the final as if he had seriously taught the class. It was too difficult and he put names on it that we had not even discussed in class. Quesada is a nice person, but that does not make me feel any better about the class. I wasted my time and money.

Professor Quesada is organized and speaks with knowledge on the topics he lectures on. Notes are very important in his class as his tests are almost entirely from lecture notes. The reading is important to do, for better understanding, but he explains it all clearly. One note, this professor has young children and is very understanding and supportive of parents who have returned to school. He will bend over backwards to help you out.

I agree with the previous reviewer's comments that Mr. Quesada spends too much time lecturing and not enough time discussing. And I don't think I found his lectures to have any truly fascinating insights that would justify the lack of student discussion. I mentioned to him I wished we had discussions in class and he said, "Ah yes, the banking theory of education," obviously quite familiar with what I was talking about, but he still seemed too enamored of his own voice to stop his endless lectures. I didn't find his lectures hard to follow as other reviewers did. Be that as it may, the comment that many have already made about his personality is also true; he is incredibly friendly and great to talk to in his office hours. There's a midterm, a final, and a long paper to write. The exams were part multiple choice, part essay. I believe in the semester I took it there was an option to do volunteer work and write a paper on that instead. Some might find the reading list a little heavy but the books he chose were fantastic (there were at least 3 books and also a reader.) It's somewhat true that if you have good reading comprehension, you really wouldn't need to go to lecture much. I would take another class from Quesada if I had the option.

Here's where I'm coming from pedagogically: I don't think that people learn best by listening to lectures, but rather through trying out their ideas in discussions--trying an argument with someone at a similar stage and modifying as ideas are challenged and defended. I'm less into the concept that education is bankable--that someone can make a deposit of information into someone else's brain--than I am into the idea of a more interactive classroom. So when I say that even though Quesada sticks pretty tightly to a lecture format and I STILL enjoyed the class immensely, that's saying something. He's one of the best lecturers I've ever had. His presentations are jam-packed with information that connects topics well and with animated and clear delivery. I was particularly impressed with the way he uses "big words" and then immediately translates them into more common ones. That means that a student who isn't so familiar with the newer academic postmodernist lingo can not only follow the lecture, but even get a sense of what all these concepts and words mean. Yay! But I do think it's a problem that Quesada can't stop lecturing. It surprised me; for someone with such critical analytical skills, I would have expected more of a critical pedagogy. I don't believe that ANYBODY can really get a whole lot out of a two-hour lecture--we all started to glaze over after the first hour. Even when he tries to get the class into discussion mode, it deteriorates pretty quickly into a radial mode with Quesada at the center and each student talking to him and being answered only by him. And then he'll go off on a mini-lecture, even when another student is ostensibly leading the discussion. It's always interesting; that's not the problem. It just wasn't a really good way for me to learn. And although Quesada continually tries to assure students throughout the course that he'll have a review session before the midterm and final (each both essay and multiple-choice), these reviews are also lectures with almost no time for students to ask him questions. My suggestion would be that he structure some time each week for some real discussions (maybe in small groups?) among the students, and also change the format of his review sessions, allowing at least an hour for student questions. As someone said earlier, going to each class didn't seem so important, but isn't that always the case with a lecture format? By the end of the semester, I probably only made it to about half the sessions. If we were having interesting discussions, I would have felt much more like going to class (as I did with all my seminar-format classes). I didn't really feel like I lost much education-wise (it was largely all in the reading), but Quesada is such a damn nice guy that I mostly felt bad about not being there. He's also super helpful during his office hours, both suggesting project topics and sources and also ways of limiting projects that have become overblown. If you're into the topic and like lectures, you'll probably love the class.

Quesada's enthusiastic about the subject but he hasn't quite figured out how to teach foundations yet. I wasn't always certain that it made a difference to go to every class. His device is to ask a lot of questions, but in at least 12 anthro classes, nothing prepared me to evaluate heavy Po Mo or symbolic anthro and that's what I expected Quesada to do so I could read Geertz and Bourbieau productively; but he didn't and he's not particularly interested in student interaction during lectures. He's not a hard grader and he is very friendly outside of his lecture presentations.

This is the most challenging class I have ever taken. I have mixed feelings about it. On one side, there is the tremendous workload, and the readings and lectures are sometimes so thick, it is difficult to get anything out of them. But at the same time, Quesada is extreamly knowledgeable, and does not expect us to get all the points of all the readings. I do not reccomentd taking Quesada unless you are ready to devote alot of time and thought, and are really interested in Anthropology. The best thing I got out of his class is that I am questioning thing in a way I never had before. It changed how I look at the world. But just be weary. He can be very rewarding if you are up to the task, but if you are not, he is very hard to follow.

Dr. Quesada is truly a wonderful professor (one of the best that I have had at SFSU). He's extremely intelligent, personable (charming), and really knows his material. Sometimes he can ramble during his lectures and go off on tangents, but what he has to say is always interesting and informative. Moreover, he encourages his students to think critically about the issues explored in class, and has high expectations of them (this is a very different approach from others in the Department). He's also extremely supportive of student's ethnographic projects. He's excited about their work and is always willing to listen to students concerns, and at times, offer very helpful advice regarding the "fieldwork" process and the writing of ethnographies. Dr. Quesada is truly an asset to this department -- one of the few bright spots in an otherwise lackluster group of professors.

For those familiar with this instructor, it need not be said that Quesada presents an interesting case. Here we have an instructor given to delivering long and rambling monologues, that while completely disjointed, and upon occassion unintelligable, are also loaded with content. The key to success in Quesada's class is to take notes only on the main points of his lectures, and to later try to coalate them into a comprehensible form. You will find that he eventually returns, however obtusely, to the same themes again and again. Get a good grip on these, and you will be in bussiness. Keep up with the reading assignments, as these are a valuable tool for applying coherrency to Quesada's ramblings. Quesada, recognizing as he does, the oftentimes random nature of his lectures, can be given much credit for two reasons; First, the man is obviously very familiar with the subject matter presented in his class. An interested student need only sit back and absorb (if this possible while furiously taking notes) the lectures, and regardless of the general sense of confusion that then ensues, they will find themselves instilled with new and valuable ideas. Second, Quesada is aware of the confusion that his lectures often generate, and if a student is able to demonstrate a real understanding of at least some of the material presented, he is more than willing to take this for what it is worth, and to give an A. Additionally, Quesada is an effective instructor because he is actively involved in several areas of study, and is therefore able to give the student a sense of contemporary American anthropology as a discipline in a state of flux. This is important, for a class dealing with the foundations of anthropology would be meaningless if it did not also address what has been built upon them. A final note in Quesada's favor is that he is a genuinely likeable fellow, given to lapses of boyish good humor, and always attentive to student concerns. In essence then, though Quesada is a highly knowledgeable and accessible instructor, with much to offer the interested student, his rambling, dis-jointed, and often confusing lectures, are not, in this reviewer's opinion, deserving of an A grade.