Jim Ralph

This is a highly reading-intensive course. Professor Ralph is truly passionate about what he teaches which makes it easier to engage in the course. He is very accommodating to the needs of his students and even gives study guides with the questions from which he will choose on the midterm and final (ex., there is one longer essay on the final, and he gives you 2 prompts, one of which will actually be on the exam.) I definitely recommend this class.

This is a highly reading-intensive course. Professor Ralph is truly passionate about what he teaches which makes it easier to engage in the course. He is very accommodating to the needs of his students and even gives study guides with the questions from which he will choose on the midterm and final (ex., there is one longer essay on …Read more

Professor Ralph was great. He was an awesome guy, very nice, and very passionate about the material he taught. I really enjoyed learning about the material and doing some of the readings as they were often very interesting, however, the course had a ton of reading, often well over 100+ pages a week. There was a midterm and final exam, both of which were very fair and the material tested was exactly what was expected, as he gave a review sheet with possible test topics on it beforehand. There was also a research probe which you had the freedom to explore any issue in any city prior to 1900 using a primary source, and a term paper which gave you the freedom to choose any city you'd like and explore an issue that the city was currently dealing with, which I found very interesting and fun to do. Overall, if you don't mind reading, I would higly reccomend this course!

Professor Ralph was great. He was an awesome guy, very nice, and very passionate about the material he taught. I really enjoyed learning about the material and doing some of the readings as they were often very interesting, however, the course had a ton of reading, often well over 100+ pages a week. There was a midterm and final exam …Read more

The class was overall an enjoyable experience. The Professor wasn't the most entertaining lecturer, but he was clearly passionate about the material. Overall, this is not a class that I felt I walked away from with much gained.