As someone who knew nothing about Persian culture coming into the class, Iranian 55 was a really nice introduction. Dr. Ingenito was welcoming towards students of all backgrounds. 40% of your grade was based on coming to class and reading the literature he posted. 30% was your midterm and 30% was your final. The prompts for the midterm and final were broad, but allow you to rope in all the readings and create nuanced arguments. They are pretty easy to answer as long as you pay attention in class.

I feel like I learned a lot and had a genuinely good time!

I think the other reviews have done a great job of explaining the course structure, but wow. This class was so eye-opening and interesting, and I definitely hope that it is taught in the future. I also hope to take another class with him someday :)

Content was really interesting, but there was quite a bit of reading. We had weekly reports synthesizing and reflecting on the readings, and we self-reported how many hours we spent on the class (syllabus said he expected 10-15 hours per week including class and discussion, but dedicating that much time is not necessary at all). We had two, 1500-word papers where we had to cite all readings assigned up until the paper (around 20-25 readings, I think). I thought that my TA (Julie) graded pretty leniently. Lectures were not recorded and slides were very long and text-heavy. Prof lectured on specific passages from the readings to talk about fluidity, homoeroticism, mysticism, etc in medieval poetry, but also tended to talk about topics that didn't relate to the readings.