Coming from a non history major taking this class as an easy GE and a person who has loved history all his life, this class is ass. Jessica is the least organized, most boring history teacher I've ever had. Considering she is teaching a course pertaining to one of the most interesting time periods and regions, she manages to turn her class into a 2 hour yap session, focusing on God knows what that you only need to retain about 5% of what she says to bullshit the final essay and the essay questions on the final. Never the less the class was easy as fuck and doesn't take much brain capacity and time if you have the ability to skim texts and spew bullshit in the weekly writing assignments.

Avoid this class if you can. I was duped by the good grading distributions, thinking that it would go okay even if there were no reviews. And I really wish people gave honest reviews about this class so I could have avoided it.
This class is incredibly disorganized, and was made even moreso by all the pro-Palestinian protests occurring midway in the quarter. The professor is medically handicapped and cannot stare at a screen for too long, so she will not respond to your emails and she also neglects to upload study materials / the lecture materials to give you time to study. She informed us very last minute that we would not have a midterm exam, and while this may seem fortuitous, this comes back to bite you because it's supposed to act as a buffer and something to learn from for the final exam. The lectures are incredibly dull, although this is also coming from someone who hates history, and she reads out a lot of lecture notes that she does not bother to put on the slides. They expect you to read wayyy too much, with a bunch of long readings (though this also depends on what your TA decides on) and textbook readings that nobody reads.
If I could go back in time, I would have most definitely dropped this class and desperately waited on the waitlist of some other GE. If you don't like history like me and are hoping to do the bare minimum for an A in this class, don't. Go to another class. Terrible teacher, terribly disorganized class structure.

The structure of this class was confusing and lectures were difficult to follow. That being said, discussion sections were very helpful for learning the content and the study guide given before the exams is enough to do well on the exams and get an A. The content and the primary source readings are also pretty interesting but the lectures were a little too fast paced.

I hate goldberg. she has some type of disability that makes her incapacitated if she looks at a computer screen for too long which im of course not gonna hold against her but what the flip even happened in this class. we are not allowed to use computers so its like impossible to keep up with the notes and pacing of her stupid flipping slides. they get shared with you after but are missing all of the narration. i also hate history classes so if you like history you might like this class, but it is nonetheless more disorganized. I took 1b last quarter and had a very good experience and even enjoyed the content. It is so hard to pay attention in Goldberg's class and absorb everything she is saying because you cannot keep up with the notes. if you write handwritten notes good luck studying your scribbles because i could write down about 5% of everything said in lecture.

There is a weekly map quiz and a weekly primary source analysis that you submit to your TA. The map quizzes will actually help your grade as long as you study for them and do well on them (they are easy to do well on, just make a mini study guide before). The discussion assignment can be fun sometimes because it is kind of a 250 word reflection on the primary source, and you learn a little. It's just Goldberg's lectures that make me want to jump off Mathematical Sciences.

I have not taken the final yet, but there is a stupid flipping final paper in addition to 2 essays on the final and this long ass ID list and big map quiz. It is very content heavy and will require the most studying out of my other classes as a GE. Very silly professor, do not recommend

This class was okay and doable. The class met twice a week which consisted of a movie one day and a short quiz and lecture the other. Every week there was also a short writing prompt based on the reading, with the majority being a minimum of 250 words, and then 2 longer ones at 500 words. The quiz was about 5 questions based on the movie and reading. The most annoying part was how much reading was assigned yet the quiz and writing focused on only 1 of the readings. Whatever reading was covered in the written assignment was also on the quiz, so it's important to read that one closely and be able to cite evidence from it in your writing. There was no midterm, but the final exam gave options between a 10-12 page essay or a more creative option. The lectures were a bit boring and had absolutely no relevance to the quizzes or writing assignments, but they were only an hour and 15 minutes so they went by fast. The TA was nice and graded the written assignments, while the professor just handled the weekly quizzes. Also, the grading system was confusing at first because assignments were initially graded on a scale of 1-3 points, but then other assignments started being graded differently, so it became unclear what your actual grade was. Ultimately, if you put in some effort and demonstrate understanding of the topic to the best of your ability, you'll likely get an A. If you need an easy upper division history course, I'd recommend taking this one.