Excellent!!

Fantastic!

I think some very tough choices were made to fit the course online. It is a successful course, but you can tell that a more in depth version of the course would probably be exciting. You would certainly go further, if you were enrolled at Chapel Hill, and had a couple semesters to contemplate the topic.

The instructor is a person who made his own videos and recordings of local storytellers, artists and musicians over a long period of time. You can tell he is a very active collector of local lore. So, he tries to feature this material, sensibly. Some of this material you was great.

On the other hand; the knowledge of the course is really only a beginning to what could be learned. For example, when mentioning the photographers or painters of the South, you are not able to see a large number of their pictures. Likewise, when talking about the major writers, such as Faulkner, you do not get to read many longer excerpts of their work. This course provides the names to reference; starting points for further study. The instructor trusts you to investigate these resources on your own.

I took this course with a special interest on the musical aspect, namely the blues, of course. In that regard the course is very superficial, but has some interesting stuff even so. The other aspects of literature, painting, and the more popular arts (kilts, oral traditions, etc.) where a nice surprise. This course gives a view of a cultural aspect of America that is very interesting and mostly unknown, particularly, I guess, to a non American. I advise this course to anyone who is interested in ethnology, folklore and popular art and music and is not already familiarized with the American South.

This course was a great introductory material to the life and the oral tradition of the American South. It explored the deeper areas of Southern life and localised the culture through one-on-one recordings and interviews. One suggestion is that in the last class, Prof. Ferris could have provided a synopsis of the course material. The pace of the teaching is adequate and the modules enable the learner to seek more information as needed. I thoroughly enjoyed taking this course.

Es una muy buena introducción al estudio de la cultura del sur de los Estados Unidos y al mismo tiempo un panorama para buscar más información sobre ciertos temas como el blues, las tradiciones orales, la religión, la vida cotidiana y los grandes creadores de la literatura y la música inmersos en la tradición del sur estadounidense.

I watched many of the videos. It was very interesting. I particularly liked the stories/video clips of musicians. I do hope you have seen The Song Catcher..this reminded me of it.

This course is complete and does offer very good information on the music, stories, and art of the American South. I really enjoyed the blues music information presented to students.

interesting, the photos, the film and voice records really bring us back to the time in the past, which also help me know what the real south is.

It's a great course with a lot of background on Blues music. Tho I wish there were more music pieces to listen as examples.

Great Material. Quizes and discussions didn't work, But i was only auditing the course. There is a wealth of information.

A good course for anyone who want to know more about the American South, but a little boring~

rich and engaging documentaries took 80% of the class content - but still fun to watch!

Great course with a different perspective on history&people. Fun and simple.

Interesting course covering various aspects of the south americans culture.

Good course with lots of educator's personal experience and footage.

Great reflections on some wonderful oral history research.

Really good course. Happy I had a chance to take it :)

Faltó entrar un poco más en detalle.

Interesting introduction to the South, Professor Ferris tries to be as exhaustive as the format allows however the exhaustivity leads to a sense of barely skimming the surface over too many topics. I would have preferred a little less and a few more in depth analysis.

Impressive archives collection, definitely a plus of this course.

The best part of this course was, of course, the videos. But it just scratched the surface. I would have been happy to have a whole unit on Eudora Welty or B B King or the Chitlen Circuit. Each and every one of the films was priceless. But the course didn't fully exploit the possibilities of the web and I felt it was very static.

Some good information but the video clips were outdated. I can see incorporating historic info, of course, but there must be some video clips from 2000 onward. as well.

This was a really good course. I was mostly interested in the music and related culture, but I will be interested to read some of the books that were discussed. Thanks!

Too reliant on materials directly collected by professor, too little context of larger artistic community.

Examples are good. Lecturer could be more interesting