Saguy is very passionate about the field she's teaching in, which is great for student learning.
The readings were VERY dense and her lectures sometimes very dry. But she brings in guest lecturers, which are fun.
the Empirical essay was not too much to ask for at all, 6 pages can feel like one when you have loads to write about.
My TA Amberia was awesome! If you have a good TA, you can make sense of these LONG readings.
There is 3 quizzes, she drops the lowest one. Her wording is VERY tricky and hard, so pay attention to detail but do not over think it.No midterm, just the paper.
OOO and do the mid-quarter evaluations and take them very seriously. She will change the pace and/or workload of the course if enough students feel she is going to fast.

One downside, she talks mostly of the female experience when it comes to gender.
The only time i heard her talk about men is when she was bashing them or they were Gay.

She compensates for how easy the material is by giving you obscure quiz questions and taking off points for things such as spelling the authors name wrong or writing too long of paragraphs. Her lectures got dryer as the quarter went on and it often felt as if she does not really know what she's talking about. This class was honestly very underwhelming and required a crazy amount of reading. I did not find this class to be intellectually compelling or groundbreaking and It was strangely hard to get good grades in it even when knowing exactly what the terms/material means. I would take a different class.

Saguy's class is very doable. She assigns a lot of readings, but she highlights the main points she will be testing on during lecture, so you can often get away with just skimming the readings before each quiz. Your grade is based on 3 quizzes (she drops 1), an empirical essay, and a final exam. The 5-6 page empirical essay is based on your observations of gender at a specific field site. I actually really enjoyed writing the essay, and had a lot to write about. I re-listened to the Bruincasts, looked over the slides, and skimmed the required readings before each quiz and got 100% on all our quizzes. She's really clear about what she wants you to know.

Don't take her class if you're looking for an A..

yes, she is passionate and her lecture is good but she grades hard!
her TAs too! they grade hard.

I really enjoyed Professor Saguy's class. She's clearly passionate about what she teaches and she makes the lectures very engaging; I learned a lot of interesting information that I still bring up in my day to day life. The readings were interesting, although there were a lot of them so make sure to keep up because you won't be able to BS your way through the quizzes. The lectures are not mandatory but you can get extra credit for participating in the polls during class.

I was slightly disappointed with the lecture on transgender people because she used some outdated language and ideas, but she did change some of the lecture slides after students spoke to her about it. I would maybe take the trans lecture with a grain of salt and try to learn more about the trans community from actual trans people. Hopefully she includes a guest lecturer in the future.

I would definitely recommend this class to others if you're prepared to read and go to lecture!

Professor Saguy's class was okay. She assigns a lot of interesting material to read, so I found that to be a plus. Grading is composed of a midterm, final, ethnography paper, and discussion participation. Most students complain about the multiple choice exams. I agree, she's not the best with multiple choice questions to test the course material. She tries hard to be tricky, and her exams are often full of grammar/spelling errors. But if you've done the reading or attended lecture, most of the questions are pretty straight forward. Fortunately, she curves well to make up for the low grade average. It got annoying after the midterm how she tried to lift up student's spirits with remarks like "Don't think you're too dumb..." every time someone asked a question. I hate to say it, but it was very "feminine" of her to act this way, but at least it showed that she was concerned.

The ethnography paper can be a pain because you're expected to observe a site (like a gym or bar) for 6 hours, take field notes, and write 6 pages on it using 3 class readings. For all the work you do, 6 pages is pretty short to put down all of what you observed and have it analyzed through 3 class readings, so you'll just have to struggle to condense all the info to EXACTLY 6 pages (they seriously expect exactly 6 full pages). But you're graded pretty fairly on them.

My biggest complaint would be lecture. It's just too slow-paced. I wish we discussed the material more in-depth. Often times, it seemed like a plain repeat of the readings. But the professor does encourage the class to think for themselves and to participate in lecture, so she's certainly concerned with student learning. She likes to learn student's names.

So no one should be intimidated by the course. If you do what you have to do, you should be fine. There's lots of readings, so don't fall behind, but a lot of them are pretty interesting in fact.

I found this class to be rather disappointing. The professor was not really up to date with culturally appropriate terminology and was very defensive when people would try to correct her. She was also not very helpful when students seek out help. Also, for the final paper, she was very hesitant to allow the TAs to give out As on the paper - that is just WRONG in my opinion. If you could take the class with someone else, I would recommend doing that.

Though I took SocM162 several years ago, my experience in Professor Saguy's course compels me to share how impactful it has been in my career as an undergraduate and graduate student and also as a young professional.

When I took this class in Fall 2014, discussing topics such as sex and gender was still somewhat "taboo," or at least not as common as it is in 2021. Professor Saguy conveyed her passion for the topics through engaging lectures and thought-provoking discussions. She always welcomed feedback about anything covered during lectures, sections, and any class materials whether during class, office hours, or via email. I appreciated her open-mindedness and willingness to learn from her students, which was very refreshing to experience in an institution like UCLA.

I recall that the assignments (quizzes, empirical essay, etc.) provided opportunities to actually APPLY the concepts we learned in class and were effective study tools. I found the readings so insightful that I've kept many of them over the years!

Professor Saguy is amazingly supportive and always made herself available to help me reason through class concepts. I also experienced a very difficult situation in my personal life while I was her student, and she was understanding and showed genuine concern for my well-being. She really went above and beyond to help me succeed!

I recently learned that she is chair of the Sociology Department, and I know it is in caring and capable hands.

I usually get all As at ucla and this class ruined it. Just do yourself a favor and don't take her.

I admit that she's an engaging lecturer and I can tell she's very passionate about the material . However, this class is way too heavy, especially when it comes to reading. As someone mentioned below, the weird thing about this class is that I've done all the readings, attended every lecture, memorized all the important terms and concepts mentioned in class and yet, I could not do well the exam. Especially for the final exam, the essay prompt was given before the exam but she did not tell us what specific essay form to use. She said it was up to us but her TA graded like it was a real out-of-class essay. To be honest, I did gain different gender perspectives but take a different class if you don't want to ruin your GPA.