I learned a lot in this class & once you understand the requirements, it's smooth sailing. While Trojan requires that you purchase the course reader, I found that I didn't really need it. Homework each week consisted of digitally annotating the reading 3 times through a program called Perusall, I found myself skimming it for the most part, and I was still able to follow along in class. We had mini-essays due every couple weeks called "interventions" where we challenged a way of thinking. I did poorly on the first one since I analyzed a quote, rather than dismantling the logic behind it, but my TA left helpful comments and I was able to recover my grade. We had one main paper & no final. There was a lot of freedom with our final paper so I used one of my intervention topics and just expanded on it. The course topics were all very abstract, so Trojan was the perfect professor for it. He is very much the teacher to answer your question with a question, or respond to "Can I go to the bathroom?" with "Can you?" However, I kind of loved that as it really forced me to think and analyze words in a way I've never had to before. He was very engaging with what otherwise may have been boring content and utilized the class space in a great way. I would recommend going to office hours which were held in the sculpture garden, as they prepare you for discussion and are actually quite thought-provoking. Overall, great class!

I dropped this class after the first two weeks, so my words are not the most reliable on his class. You have to be a theory (i.e. philosophy) person to enjoy this class, or to even want to be in the classroom. I am sure that for theory nuts this class is super interesting, but if you can't understand the material, then you better drop it before it's too late.

I feel a little bit too happy once I hit the drop button. I got all As in my other classes and I thank God I dropped it for my GPA. Professor Trojan is a good person, and his class is very interesting. If only the course material is not all "alien letters" then I would continue with this class. Be warned that this class is beyond your imagination of hardness.

Dr. Trojan was really sweet and helped clarify really difficult coursework. My TA, Michael M., was also really helpful and provided a lot of assistance.

Honestly, this was a brutal class for me. Im an IR concentration and took this class because I needed to take a theory class as one of the courses outside of my concentration. Out of all the upper div courses ive taken over the past two years this has been my least favorite by far. The prof was very subjective in his gradings, and did not really have any rubrics or guidelines for writing the papers which made up the majority of the grade. The final paper had very vague instructions and when I spoke with him during office hours he did not seem very approachable at all and was not willing to give many suggestions regarding how I could improve my work. That being said, if you know that you love theory and want a professor who is just as big of a fan of it as you are, this is the class for you. If you are someone outside of the concentration looking to take a theory course to get your requirements fulfilled, and only slightly interested in the topic or not very well versed in the writings of political theorists then definitely stay away. If I could go back in time to stop myself from taking this class I definitely would, I do not feel like I learned that much and feel like a lot of the views shared in the class mirrored that of the professor and were not very open to debate or other interpretations. Again, definitely would not recommend this course unless theory is your forte and something your are deeply passionate in.

The workload of this class was really heavy. Tons of readings. Have to write a total of three papers (two short ones and a longer one) throughout the quarter. The grading of this class can be said to be determined by the three papers, which Prof called interpretive arguments. Basically you have to follow the rubric he designed when writing, and make sure you stick with interpreting the meaning of the text instead of talking about your thoughts on it. An A for this class is not impossible, but it would likely cost you a lot of energy.

One of the best lower div poli sci classes I have taken. Although professor Trojan is certainly a character, he is beyond engaging and fun during lectures. So much so that I was devastated to miss out on classes when the strikes happened. The grade in the class consists mainly of papers which are manageable as long as you do the reading or even if you simply understand it thematically. Although the readings seem tedious, they are made to be interesting in lecture and can often be skimmed over. Definitely take this class with Dr.Trojan!

Personally, I was not a fan of this class. Part of it was the material, which is basically just your run-of-the-mill political philosophy texts (Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx, and a couple of contemporary articles near the end). You can tell Dr. Trojan is passionate about the material, but a lot of the time he came across as kind of arrogant in his lectures and didn't really offer interpretations of the philosophers' overarching theory.

The assignments of this class included Perusall annotations that counted for participation credit, Reading Engagements (worksheets that are equivalent to about 3 paragraphs of interpretation and analysis), Interventions (basically slightly longer versions of the reading engagements that aren't in worksheet format), and the Final Essay. For the final essay, Trojan gave us about 5 prompts we could choose from. These were very, very standard interpretive assignments. If you like a boring assignment that you can pump out pretty easily, the work in this class will be right up your alley. Personally, I think the only interesting thing about Political Theory is how you can apply it externally, like to modern events or media, so, I was kind of let down by the unimaginative assignments. Kinda felt like a high school philosophy class.

I took this class as a part of my major and overall enjoyed it. This class is a LOT of philosophy type reading and work though, so if you aren’t into that you may not like it. The workload was very manageable but still required a bit of effort. I liked the way the class was set up and enjoyed the lectures and discussion sections, although I found the professor to be frustrating. He was a good lecturer but can be arrogant and not the best listener. His lectures were really engaging and I was able to get really into them to the point where the time would fly and I thought I gained a lot of understanding from them. When students asked him about how he would accommodate us during the TA strike, he was pretty unhelpful. I also think there is a lot of reading involved in this class, but to be honest I didn’t finish most of it and still felt confident enough because the professor talked about the reading material so much in lecture. I would overall recommend this class.

Idk how i feel about this class tbvh. the prof is really nice and clearly passionate about what he's teaching but overall i just didnt love the material too much so it was pretty boring for me. the workload is a decent amount and sometimes the assignments were unclear because it wouldnt be thoroughly discussed (structure, requirements) but once i got the hang of it my grades were pretty decent.
i took it as a ge so for anyone else doing that - don't add onto your own work for no reason.
also to be fair after a point i just stopped showing up to lectures and even discussions because of how bored i was

Prof. Cody Trojan is a marvelous lecturer and incredibly thoughtful professor. He is an indisputable genius in his field and has such a noticeable passion for political theory. The workload for this class is quite heavy and it goes quite fast, but that's honestly just the nature of the subject, and no fault of Prof. Trojan's. He makes writing the term paper at the end such a smooth process by having multiple mini-papers throughout the quarter to build up your skills. 100% Would take this class over and over again.