Professor Rivas excelled in engaging his students on colonial Latin American history. He is very passionate and knowledgeable in his discipline. This was by far one of my favorite classes based on the material. He used artwork that are relevant to his lectures and tests. He is straightforward on his prompts, so make sure you read them carefully for the final essay. He is very friendly and helpful to those that need any clarification/assistance.

This review will be for one of his Central American courses, since they are not up on BruinWalk yet! Prof Rivas is amazing. He radiates good energy and truly cares about his students. He knows what he teaches and every lecture was interesting and informative.

Workload: The readings are HEAVY. I could not keep up with the readings as much as I tried, and ultimately it didn't matter because we didn't have to write discussion posts on them or anything like that. The only things we had to do were two essays, one group project, and a summary of the group project.

Textbook: We are asked to purchase a few textbooks, but I didn't use most of them. I only needed 2 books for one of the essays, and the rest were done with free material supplied throughout the quarter. I would say just wait it out and see which books you will really need.

Attendance: Attendance was not recorded, and his lectures were (sometimes) recorded and added onto BruinLearn. The slides don't contain enough information on their own to skip lecture since he uses the slides more as a background/guide than anything, so don't skip lecture!!!