Professor Pierre is no doubt an extremely knowledgeable and helpful professor who loves what she does and has much to offer. She is kind, accepting, and accommodating in every way. The workload is fairly reasonable with weekly readings (student purchased) followed by weekly reflection papers and three exams. With that being said, the structure of this class did not work well with me. This class should be considered two separate classes with how it is broken up and structured. There is lecture and discussion that both seem to encompass two completely different concepts, ideas, and set of materials. In discussion, students are expected to read multiple books and write weekly reflections on them. These discussions, which are heavily student driven, consist of students talking about the key points and ideas of the books. Conversely, when attending lecture, often the readings are not even discussed, brought up, or relevant to the lecture itself. These lectures also consist of Professor Pierre almost entirely reading slideshows verbatim. Personally, I feel attending lecture is useless when a professor takes an hour and a half to read a slideshow that is available online that I could read in 15 minutes on my own. Furthermore, she talks extremely fast and often stumbles over her words making it sometimes difficult to follow what she is saying or where she is going with her thoughts. Again though, this is counterbalanced by a very heavy reliance on slideshows but is also bolstered by her frequent asking of student questions with further explanations if necessary. Overall, Professor Pierre is a wonderful professor who no doubt has a passion for what she does, but personally, the style of her teaching doesn't work well with me.

I really liked this class and learned so much from it. We were assigned to read three ethnographies through the quarter, and each was very interesting. Also, we were assigned to watch movies that were eye-opening and fabulous. Being an IDS major, I really took away important ideas that will help me with this major. You won't regret taking this course because when you finish it, you realize how much you have learned in just 10 weeks. Grading is as follows:
Attendance+participation+response papers=20 points
Exam 1=25 points
Exam 2=25 points
Exam 3=30 points
The exams are not cumulative. You read a book in three weeks, attend the lectures, watch a movie and take the exam. Most answers come from the lectures (the professor posts lecture notes for the students) and the rest is from the movie and the book. Her exam questions never confused anyone as they were very clear and easy.
Professor Pierre is very knowledgeable and passionate about the topic. I also had an amazing TA, Sita, who is very smart and helpful!
Take this class! You will love it!
Good luck!

Very knowledgeable professor. Took the class during covid-19 pandemic. She doesn't record any of the lectures or discussions, so that was kinda hard because I had a 15 hour time difference (I was waking up at dawn trying to listen to her speak), but she gives very detailed lecture notes that were very useful for the exams. Her exams are open book, and in the form of short answers and essays, and she gives you a week to do them. Super accommodating on that part. We have to finish 3 books throughout the quarter, so each week we had about 2-3 chapters to read, and a reading response to submit. But the responses make sure that you're reading, and they really help for the exam. Overall a great class. I definitely recommend you take this class.

difficult class in that the readings were super dense. the class was structured around three ethnographic novels that were difficult to understand, very dense, like graduate level stuff tbh (this was my perspective as a non-anthro major). but you can get by if you understand the basic concepts from section and ask questions. the lectures are AMAZING though, professor Pierre takes a very liberal stance when it comes to capitalism and I loved learning from her. I learned so much about US imperialism, indigenous struggles against settler colonialism, and neoliberalism in the West African context.