Professor Purves is a very clear professor. I'm an engineering major, and I found her to be the best lecturer I've had in two years at UCLA. She does all of the analysis for you, you just have to listen and soak it in. My TA, Sarah Bishop, was incredibly helpful, and very cute too I must add. The tests were IDs and essays, but they were graded pretty fairly I'd say. You can't just regurgitate information, you have to add your own thoughts as well, but it is a good class. The paper was not that difficult either, it was 6-8 pages if I recall correctly. I would recommend taking this class with Professor Purves.

If you're kinda interested in mythology and are looking for an engaging G.E, take this class! Professor Purves is alright (she kind of talked AT us instead of giving an engaging lecture and she seemed kind of disorganized) but your grade 100% depends on your T.A so good luck. I had Alison, who was super nice and helpful and a fair grader, but I heard horror stories about Eric. Some things to note about the class
1) She doesn't put slides online, but you don't really need to go to lecture because everything is literally in the readings.
2) THERE ARE SO MANY TEXTBOOKS FOR THIS CLASS AND THEREFORE, A LOT OF READING! I found it interesting, but you have to drop a lot of money to end up reading fractions of books, but everything is based on them.
3) Her lectures are styled in the following ways; identifying 'IDs' aka key terms/characters and then narrating what happened in that week's readings and drawing connections to random things. There are two quizzes that are based on the IDs, and they have a heavy weight in the midterm and final as well. You basically have to know the readings super well to do well in the class.
4) Find friends to make group study guides with for the IDs and exams, I did it with people in my discussion and by splitting the work, it saved us a hell of a lot of time.
Overall it was a good class, but again not a super easy GE you can blindly pass.

Great class
Good Professor
Interesting Subject
A lot of Books to Buy

Professor Purves is extremely caring and wants her students to branch out in their thinking and to be able to analyze works in their own way.

I think Classics 30 is really hit or miss. I thought the class was very enjoyable, but you get out what you put in. It is a really interesting class and fun to analyze works and how epic journeys have flowed throughout history. TAs really can make or break your grade since they grade your essays.

But Purves is very fair and she wants her students to succeed. Good class and not very hard.

I enjoyed the Fantastic Journey class (which is CL 60, but that wasn't listed so i just put CL 30 below) very much, both its concept and how Dr. Purves taught it. The material we read and discussed was fascinating, and I learned to look at these texts, even ones I'd read before, in a completely new way. I found the lectures easy to follow and you could always feel Dr. Purves's enthusiasm for what she was teaching. The essay prompts were pretty good, not super imaginative, but were easy to think about and respond to . I really appreciated the midterm; the half-multiple choice, half- passage analysis was awesome. Thank you for a great course, Dr. Purves

Absolutely loved this professor! I went into this class expecting it to be quite difficult but since I love mythology also expected to have fun. Sure enough, Prof. Purves did not disappoint, she tells you what to expect on exams, identifies the key points to the readings, makes everything straight forward and enjoyable. Midterm was easy, identifying terms and the final was legit, essay, I.D.s, passages, images. I loved the paper topics, which I believe was like 7-9 pages or something but nothing too bad since there is so much to the readings. Overall, go to class, definitely discussions which were helpful, and you should be fine. I ended up with an A+ in the class and felt damn good about it-even though I sort of expected it.

Professor Purves was great! This was one of the best GE classes I've ever taken. I really enjoyed her lectures. Her assigned readings were fun; I don't EVER read any form of poetry if I could avoid it, and I actually really enjoyed them in her class.
She always tells you exactly what is going to be on her tests, especially the final. There are a lot of characters from the readings to memorize, and only a small number will appear on her tests, and you have to connect them to relevant ideas and concepts in the course, meaning not just identifying and writing only what you know. However, as long you do the readings, go to every one of her lectures, and pay attention, you're pretty much set for all the tests.
The TAs for the class were great as well. They always expanded the ideas from lecture even further, and discussions were always really interesting.
Definitely take this class.

I originally took this class to fulfill a GE requirement, and it ended up sending me down the path to become a Classics major; I completely disagree with the negative reviews already posted. Professor Purves did a great job of making the class both informative and captivating, as well as occasionally humorous. I guess maybe your experience depends on the TA, but I had a great TA as well. There were a lot of terms to study for the exams, and you had to really go beyond just defining and identifying them; the first midterm grade was a little disappointing. You really have to tie material together from different sources in order to get full credit. The grading was a moderately difficult; it's not impossible though, and I did well in the class overall. The final is exhausting, though; it was the first time I took nearly the entire 3 hours, and the first time I've filled more than one blue book.

too many readings. grading depends on ur TAs. Midterm is 20% (3 IDs, 1 passage), partic. 10%(postings, quiz, interaction...), Quiz 10% (3 IDS), Essay 25%, Final 35% (6 IDS, 2 passages, 1 essay: it will take you the full three hours!)

Interesting myths, not that easy of a GE. alot of reading. Lectures interesting and sometimes funny.

Hope this helps! :)

purves was a pretty good teacher. she should just stick to only her lecturing; the outside lectures were horrible. overall, an interesting class and we covered some cool myths. it provided me with a new take on mythology.