Moses Rischin

I woudln't be quite as hard on Dr. Rischin as some of the other reviewers, but I do understand what they were saying. I think he's a good professor in general, but difficult to work with in a number of ways. He does really ramble a lot, and while usually I thought he was interesting in the beginning, I would tend to lose focus after a while. That happens with some professors, though. But one thing I found really off-putting with him was that even towards the last couple weeks of the class, neither I nor any of the others in his class had any idea of what our grades were! I thought this was really awful and unnecessary. We'd had to give several oral reports and so on, but he didn't give us grades on any of them, even though they eventually made up part of the final grade! Our final paper made up the biggest part, and I never knew what grade he'd assigned to that- all I knew was what I got for the class on the whole, which of course I found out after it was all over. That is unnecessary stress for a student, especially a senior trying to graduate! One student asked him if we could have some idea of what our grades were so far and he actually said, "I think everyone will end up getting what they deserve." In other words, wait in suspense and have no clue what he thinks we deserve until the end! I also never had any idea what he thought of our work- there was no evaluation given back to us for any of it. I think that part was not very professional- like he just wanted us to read his mind or something. I thought his assignments were interesting and I liked the class on the whole, however, so that's why I'm giving him an okay grade.

After two meetings this professor motivated me to get on this website for the first time ever and write a review. As you can tell by the grade, that's not a good thing. For what it's worth, and that may not be much to you since I only attended two class meetings, I have to agree with the other reveiwers. Did you ever have a grandmother that would ramble on and on and on going off on tangent after tangent, MAYBE getting back to the original subject eventually if you were lucky? You may love your grandmother, but if she's like this there's no denying she should not be lecturing. It was a dissappointment, because this class has so much potential as far as subject matter. The books and movie he shows are very much worth reading and watching, but the lectures were painful experiences that I wouldn't wish on any history major. Sure, it could get better. Two three hour sessions were enough to make this reviewer not want to find out.

Rischin wrote a profoundly interesting book in "The Promised City," but his lectures were boring. His style of constant repetition of the previous day's, sometimes week's, lecture was tedious and unnecessary. He would begin by saying that there are four items that contributed to a situation, but list only two. When you ask him what the third and fourth items are, he would not be able to answer the question. He has not written a book since "The Promised City" in the 1960's and it is reflected in the course materials required. All the books are his or friends of his, and are as out dated as "The Promised City."

Immigration as an American Tradition since 1850. Fascinating! Why are we all drawing pictures and writing poetry in this class? Why did it start immediately, despite our best intentions? Why is this subject matter so incredibly rich and exciting and yet we feel paralyzed to enter into ANY kind of discussion or question and answer in class. Moses Rischin is credentialed, erudite, respected in his field, and no doubt he once displayed some original insight. Unfortunately, he is also a terrible lecturer who, in my opinion, is resting on his laurels. Run-on sentences that are literally circular in structure and connected by "ands" and "buts" and "presumably"s are the least of his forensic offenses. The reading list is wonderful, but your grade will rest on an essay that reflects ALL of the reading. That is a challenge, because there's a lot of reading. In my opinion, if Rischin wishes to improve his student's performance (and it seems he wants us to do better), he needs to take some RISKS even at this late stage of his career. Please, Professor Rischin, please discipline yourself and respect us enough to make an outline of the points you want to cover during class --major concepts for us to look out for in our reading-- repeat those points and ASK us if we understand them, and then commit to making yourself clear if we don't. As an academic and a writer you have made your mark, but you need to make the leap to communicating with us effectively while we're there in the room with you too.