Wilkinson is an interesting dude. Taking this class online, I never met the man but wish I had. In the online format, the class is really chill. He has professionally edited lectures that are super interesting to watch and I definitely recommend 2x speed on them cause he is slow.
Homework, on the other hand, is tedious. The class has an essay a week for nine weeks (500 words), a 2000-3000 word-final. The TA also posts some of the prior week's essays from their sections and you have to write short responses to them.
While this class has a lot of work, they grade extremely leniently. The class is super easy and the only time I failed to get a 100% on any assignment was the final, which I got a 95% on. The two books are rather long and expensive and I highly recommend libgen for them, cause I got them both for free through it. Also, text your class's GroupMe and someone will have the books as a pdf. Even though you are supposed to read the books, the lectures and some skimming, plus control-F, suffice. I recommend reading the most important chapters regarding CHINA in both books but other than that, skimming is fine.
Overall, the online environment is isolating and there is almost no connection between the students, yet the class is easy and the content is fascinating. Plus, asynchronous is lovely.

P.S. DON'T GET KIM AND IF YOU HAVE HER ALREADY, SWITCH. YOU WILL NOT PASS THIS CLASS IF YOU HAVE HER!

If you do all the extra credit, which is very easy, your grade will raise 10%. I ended the class with way over 100%. The professor is so boring that I fell asleep in class even with a good night's sleep. Do not go to the lectures as he teaches you nothing. He merely reads off the slides and the only useful information on them is the info for the weekly assignments. Don't get me wrong, he is a genuinely nice man but his teaching skills are subpar, to say the least. This was the easiest A+ of my life. Even my high school freshman year P.E. class was a harder A+.

I never went to class or read the textbook and ended up with a A-. There are no tests, all that really matters is going to discussions to present your essay. I got by writing the 800 word essays by just doing internet research and looking at a slide or two that he posts from the lectures.

Dr. Wilkinson is a cute old man, but if you needed to learn from him, I don't think it'd be easy to. He speaks SUPER FAST, like ridiculously. His slides are pretty useless too. The class, despite that, is easy. You basically just need to read, and you could probably get away without doing that too. The class is 50% the final paper and 50% small papers you do in discussion. The small papers are like 400 words and if you did even a little work, you would get full credit on it. The final paper was harder, but is just a research paper and the prompts were pretty open-ended, so you could twist it what way you wanted. If you can get any poli sci class with TA Joseph Perry, do it. HE IS A LIFESAVER AND AN AMAZING TA.

Although his lectures fall short of engaging, I personally think old people are really cute, so that made me go to most lectures. His slides hold a lot of useful information for the essays, and I wrote most of them by skimming through. The readings are interesting, but the class doesn't offer a lot of incentive to read them, so a lot of the learning will have to be self-motivated.

This class is very writing intensive. He will tell you this on your first day of class, you will be writing many small 800 words essays and then one final 10 page essay (he however shortened it to 5 pages for us). YOU DO NOT NEED TO GO TO CLASS. There is NO final exam, NO midterm. You are graded on participation in section, and your writing assignments, which are SOLELY based on the textbook. Read the assigned readings, don't go to class and you'll get an easy A. It was a lot of writing, but if you go to your TA during his/her office hours with your written essay they will give you pointers on what to include and what to leave out, which is going to guarantee a good grade. At least my TA did so. I went to maybe 3, maybe 4 lectures, read all the readings, went to TA office hours and scored an easy A+.

Super super easy GE. Because of covid, we did online learning so we only saw the professor through recorded videos and if you watch the lecture, you don't have to do the reading. The workload isn't light because you do a LOT of writing and your TA is super important as they grade all your work so its important that he or she likes you. If you can, get Chun! She is super approachable and her sections were fun compared to the other ones. Overall, recommend this course for the easy A.

This class is basically taught by your TA. The professor uploads weekly videos, which are easy to understand. You must submit the weekly (400 word) essay to your TA. I recommend Chun, A, because she is very chill and understanding. If you do all the work and the 2000 word final essay, you basically pass the class with a B. Other students did not like their TA, because they graded harshly or required too much. Good luck and pick wisely!!!

a super chill class. all you have to do is the reading and the weekly papers. you honestly don't even have to do the entire reading, just the parts that relate to the weekly paper prompts.

This is a SUPER easy GE. You write a page paper each week responding to a question he poses (super open-ended), pretty much all opinion-based, and then discussion was just everyone reading their main ideas from their writing. No midterm or final. There was a final paper that was like 8 pages or something, but again, it's just opinion with facts to back it up and it could be about anything you wanted. We had readings each week that I didn't do and aren't necessary to do because you could find facts to back up your writing by looking it up. This class completely depends on your TA, but since Wilkinson is super chill (he's 80 years old), so are the TAs. Also totally unnecessary to show up to class because he posts his slides and just reads off of them.