Aranye is brilliant. If you put in the effort, her classes will make you a lot smarter. The readings are SUPPOSED to be difficult. Read things more than once, really try to understand each passage before moving on, and then go to office hours. If all you care about is grades, don't take her, but if you want a good education, definitely do.

Aranye is a sweet person. Other than that, she's easily the worst professor I've ever had at UCSB. First of all, she's really disorganized. She assigned the paper way later than she was supposed to and gave us little time to finish. second, she makes everything hard to the point where only a psych major would understand whats going on. BEWARE

Aranye is a sweet person, but is the most disorganized professor I've ever had. The lectures weren't boring, but the readings definitely were. She uses different books every time she teaches this class, but when I took it, I had only psychology texts with Macbeth as the single work of "literature". She's also a tough grader!

Super interesting class and awesome teacher. The assigned novels were amazing and kept the class interesting. Wants her students to do well and grades very fairly!

She is very passionate about the subject: Psychoanalytic Theory & the course materials were interesting. Other than that though, the objective of the course were very unclear. No idea what was going to be on the midterm or final or what was expected of us until about 2 days before. Very disorganized & unclear. Nice though. Just not really worth it

Loved her! The topic we studied was on Language and Feeling. She made it extremely interesting. Her grading isn't too bad. A little bit disorganized but it didn't affect the class too much.

Fradenburg is a really nice professor who is enthusiastic about the material she teaches--in this case, the Canterbury Tales. However, she does not grade in an easy or understandable manner. She deducts points at random without explanation. Furthermore, she seems to expect students to conduct independent research in order to excel. Good luck.

By far the worst class I've ever taken. The professor was unclear and very cold and stiff and the material discussed in lecture had nothing to do with the readings. I had a horrible TA, too. I received D's on both my papers. The only reason I passed the class was because I spent hours doing outside research and reiterated her lectures on the final.

Terrible. She chose interesting texts to read, but her lectures are pointless and don't coincide well with the material. Also... I am still waiting for her to post my course grade... 2 weeks after the final.

You definitely have to work harder in this class, but if you are open to what she proposes, you shouldn't have too hard a time. People seem to be complaining because the professor won't do the thinking for them. But she has tremendous insight. There IS, however, an assumed prior knowledge of literary canon on your part before getting to this class.

Horrible. lectures were painfully dull & off-topic & she rarely, if ever, lectured on the material. Section was pointless. Her PowerPoint slides were useless, and her essay prompts were vague & badly worded. Would not recommend this class unless absolutely mandatory.

terrible. just terrible. the most difficult class i've ever taken at UCSB.

This class destroyed my confidence with English. The lectures are torture, and my section TA had little sympathy for us. Avoid if possible.

Honestly, Fradenburg isn't a difficult professor, but she is absolutely terrible at lecturing. She will talk about babies or movies... anything but the text. Her lectures are dull and off topic, so only take this course if you are willing to teach yourself.

Least favorite professor I've had. Monotoned and kind of boring. She is sometimes interesting but her theories are a little ridiculous.

She rambles A LOT but makes some interesting points when she gets around to actually talking about the texts. Insightful but ALWAYS gets off topic. Yet her lectures are really helpful for the midterm/final papers so take notes when she actually gets to the point. The lectures may be boring and off topic but worth attending.

I've heard that she's a better professor in smaller classes. I had her in a large lecture, and she was incredibly boring. It was difficult for me to relate the lectures to the reading a lot of the times, and the paper prompts were ridiculous.

Amazing professor. Beautiful inside and out. Not only genius but very dedicated.

Fradenburg blows my mind. Absolutely my favorite professor ever. Subtle but great sense of humor. Listen to her, she is brilliant. Loves middle English and she reads it beautifully. If you love English you will love her. I have never found a professor who loves her work so much, or who wants so much for us to love it like she does.

english majors... you will be rewarded. if you are not used to abstract variability and conceptual criticisms you will not enjoy her teaching method. This is why note-taking is difficult in this class. Challenge yourself, she teaches a lot of life lessons I think.

Honestly beautiful lecturer. She would stand at the podium for the entire period and just spill insight. Recommend it for english majors, theoretical language and her class rhetoric addresses many of the concerns i had while choosing to study this subject.Fantastic ability to reconstruct medieval literatures into a pertinent and affecting perspecti

She can not get through an entire sentence without saying 'uh' or 'uhm' at least 129837 times. She rambles a lot. Its a chore to go to lecture (coming from someone who actually enjoys class) The class is not super hard but her teaching style aggravates me to no end. Boring, dull, monotonous - stay away.

This chick is interesting. Yes, her voice is a bit monotonous, and she does go off on tangents, but the tangents she goes off on are pretty dam entertaining. If you find eccentric people who are border-line psychotic entertaining then take the class. You'll learn alot about psychodynamics too.

Maybe not factually supported but the information she provides in class is definitely eye-opening and applicable to the real world. I took the class 'for fun' and was satisfied with what i was able to take from it. Aranye is open, frank, intelligent, and loves to say ummmm in between every few words, so if thats a pet peeve of yours...be warned!