Rebecca Mitchell

This is a very laid-back course that relies primarily on group discussion and projects. There was rarely ever a PowerPoint and the professor often tried to let students lead the conversation based on a preliminary set of discussion questions that would be handed out at the start of class. There was a lot of reading for every class, but it was always engaging, and the conversation was always interesting with a broad range of opinions.

This is a very laid-back course that relies primarily on group discussion and projects. There was rarely ever a PowerPoint and the professor often tried to let students lead the conversation based on a preliminary set of discussion questions that would be handed out at the start of class. There was a lot of reading for every class, b …Read more

I'm a junior at Middlebury and can confirm this is the worst class I've ever taken while being a student here. Our class started with over 40 kids and is ending with just 15 of us - and it's painfully clear why so many students dropped. I signed up for this course because I've had friends take classes with Damascus and loved him. What I was not prepared for was the secondary professor, Rebecca Mitchell. Not only is she a grating and unengaging lecturer who clearly wanted to only teach from her knowledge on European history and little more, her expectations for a 100-level course were absurd. More, her lack of empathy for her students was borderline disturbing. The class itself was clearly poorly designed, as we basically rewrote the entire curriculum after the initial classes when it became clear that the amount of reading we were given was impossible to complete and synthesize into weekly papers. Even after they changed the amount of reading, we were still given roughly 100 pages to write weekly essays on, on top of doing discussion posts, listening quizzes, and other projects. I took this course because I was genuinely interested in learning about music in this context, and was excited to be a student of Damascus. While I do appreciate what I learned from him, it was overshadowed by Professor Mitchell's own desires to teach from her own area of study. As this course ends, I can't help but lament that I now know far more about European music history than any other part of the world - a shame, for a course meant to engage us in decolonial thought surrounding music and resistance in places beyond the west. I would not recommend this course in its current form to any other student. I would not recommend taking a class with Professor Mitchell if you are someone who values engaging, compassionate, or even just tolerable instruction from teachers. I am disappointed to be leaving this course with much less excitement for both history and music-making. If you are passionate about either of these things, stay away.

I'm a junior at Middlebury and can confirm this is the worst class I've ever taken while being a student here. Our class started with over 40 kids and is ending with just 15 of us - and it's painfully clear why so many students dropped. I signed up for this course because I've had friends take classes with Damascus and loved him. Wha …Read more

I took this course in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and wanting to learn more about the history of this space. This course was difficult –– a lot of reading –– but very much worthwhile. I would definitely take another class with Professor Mitchell.