I love this man. I am only a first-year but this will most likely be one of the favorite courses I will take at UCLA. He is so compassionate and he truly cares about his students. He advises students to keep their grades as letter grading rather than pass no pass because he assures you that it will boost your GPA. Even though the class was at 8 am it was an engaging discussion. There are no discussion classes, you all just discuss during the 8 am lecture. It can be discouraging because participation is 20% and a final 2000-2500 word paper is 80% but I can assure you that you will be fine. I wrote my essay partially the day before and mostly the day of and I was able to get an A in the class. I can admit when I have written a good paper, and let me say that was not some of my best work. The key points when writing it is explaining your analysis of the novel of your choice. It is helpful to engage in discussion because for one it is participation credit but it also allows you to see if your interpretation of the novel or film is on the right track. He is tremendously accommodating and encouraging. I would take every single GE class with him if I could. There are multiple books needed to be read for this class but there are no quizzes and the books are quite easy to read. I truly think this class is a good GE to take because you learn a lot without having to deal with many assignments.
TLDR:
TAKE THIS CLASS YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT!!! THIS MAN IS MADE OF STRAIGHT GOLD

This is an amazing class. Professor Thomas was super kind, accommodating, and did a great job teaching this course. We do have a lot of books to read, and I am normally not a fan of reading-heavy classes, but I can honestly say that the books on his syllabus were enjoyable and it never felt like a chore doing work for this class. Classes are structured such that we talk about the novels we read and movies we watch in the context of French colonialism's effect across various time periods - Professor Thomas gives great background and guiding questions, and this was a welcome class in the quarter! The only grades are participation and a heavy emphasis on a final paper, but he offers a lot of one-on-one help with the final paper and I felt really prepared to write it. I highly recommend this class to anybody interested!

I have absolutely no regrets taking this class with Professor Thomas! He's super nice and understanding, and you can tell that he really enjoys teaching this class. There's a couple books you have to read, but they're pretty interesting to read and talk about. He gives a lot of freedom for the final paper and is super helpful if you meet up in office hours to talk about your prompt. I definitely recommend taking this class!

Professor Thomas is a great professor who really made remote learning engaging. The books he chose were super interesting and the discussions in class were always engaging. The workload was light with only one final paper and reading in order to prepare to participate in the class discussions. He was also very accommodating to covid and regularly checked up on his students. Even though the grading was 80% based on the final paper, he gave us plenty of time to do the final paper and offered office hours in order to discuss exactly what we wanted to write and as long as you talked a few times in class, you would get a 100% in participation. Overall, super interesting and easy GE and would highly recommend Professor Thomas!