Dr. Burke is an extremely thorough professor, perhaps a little to the detriment of actually engaging her students with the material. I enrolled in her class as someone already extremely interested in religious studies, archaeology, the history of the middle east, and with a strong tolerance for dense readings and writing critique. I still had a hard time with some of the readings she handed out, and I found her critique of the papers so heavy-handed it was baffling to me.

I was really, really interested and excited by her lectures but her grading quickly beat that out of me. I spent more time combing every single reading to ensure I didn't accidentally miss a reference somewhere (and therefore get demoted points) than I did actually engaging with any of the course material or synthesizing information. Initially, I read each paper thoroughly and thought about how I could integrate them together, but after being marked down for not including small things, like single-sentence lines in certain papers, I quickly changed strategies to just CTRL+Fing through the readings for shared vocabulary and then forcing myself to talk about whatever words I could find in every single paper.

I don't think her course is HARD, it's just that she cares so much about the small details that it sucks the joy out of learning about the subject matter. Her slides are so thoughtful and she covers the material with what is clearly a lifetime of love and dedication. I came away from the class with a fascination about so many things I had never considered before going into it. Yet, the grading stressed me out so much that I found myself dreading coming into class and losing sleep over the next reading assignments. I understand it's on me as a student for caring so much about my grades, but for those of us here on merit scholarships and planning on pursuing graduate school, such exacting grading is the fastest way to sour the learning experience.

This has to have been the single dullest class I've ever taken. What made it worse is that Professor Burke should be an English teacher. Her focus was far more on your writing than content - and worse, she wanted regurgitation of material, not thoughtful analysis or critique. Though I narrowly squeaked by with an "A" it was the most difficult "A" at UCLA (and I graduated summa cum laude - so I had plenty of A's!) To her credit, Professor Burke was very helpful outside of office hours in providing feedback about why she graded certain ways - though she's a bit prickly if you hint that you're concerned about your GPA and not the material. I went into this class with very high hopes, and left with no desire to ever learn more on this subject again.

This class was incredibly dull, and the professor was not engaging at all. Lectures slide all around history and are not organized chronologically. She grades extremely harshly and often arbitrarily. Make sure you read the assignment details at least THREE TIMES, or else you will miss tiny details and lose points. I would not retake this class or professor and don't recommend it unless you're super passionate about medieval egypt and archaeology. The only reason I attended lectures is because she does random attendance checks.

From a student that has taken multiple Islamic themed courses, this class was abysmal. In fact, I dreaded attending and doing any work for this professor...here's my list babes:

Pros:
-Love Islamic Art and Architecture: this class addressed ceramics, coins, architecture, historic events, and your basic archaeology studies.
-Slides were clear, interesting, engaging, and informative

Cons:
-Assignments were easy in theory, HOWEVER, the professor lacked the ability to be organized and CLEAR in her directions. Therefore, ALL assignments felt like rollercoaster of uncertainty (I had to increase my anxiety meds for this piece).
-Nitpicks on the most irrelevant items.
-Again her clarity was the worst when it came to assignments. No exaggeration (I have screenshots), we would receive at LEAST one/two announcements a week regarding the clarification of her instructions to either her Vocabulary lists (5), Mini Essays (3), and Final Paper.
-If I received the amount of clarifications on my instructions...the problem is me. I would fix that. Let's do better, yeah?

Lastly, would I recommend this professor? No.
Save yourself the frustration and anxiety medication.
I had to be practically sedated to make it through the last three weeks of this class.

For someone interested in art history and archaeology, I LOVED this class. Islamic Archaeology is a topic not often covered in your GE courses, so it was really cool to go more in-depth on it, and it felt very relevant to today's world. Professor Burke does speed through the lectures, so be ready to take lots of quick notes (she does post the slides though, which are basically all you need). There are map quizzes every week, which were the hardest part for me since it was just memorizing a bunch of Arabic city names. Otherwise, the midterms weren't bad, and the papers, while quite long at 10 pages, were manageable if you put the time in. I would recommend this class! You'll learn a lot and enjoy the material.

The most helpful professor I've had this year. Very understanding and accomodating. Prof. Burke is a great source of information, further readings, and will help you find sources for final paper (hint: use books, not JStor articles.) The final paper prompts were very interesting! Lectures are clear, but a lot of information, so be ready to take notes quickly. Readings are relevant (Insoll is especially enjoyable). I learned a lot. Would absolutely take classes with her in the future.

So far, this is one of my favourite classes that I've taken. The class is interesting if you like archaeology and history. There are a lot of readings but you can skim through it and the lecture goes over the important things. The midterm is a short essay and short answer questions, so if you don't like writing, maybe the class is not for you. There is also a final research paper (8 pages) and she helps you through it. I think this is one of those classes that prepare you for grad school.
I have taken all the classes that Professor Burke teaches at this school and if she opens a new class, I would be first in line.

I loved this class and will be taking her class again next quarter. She is very nice and very helpful. She really loves the subject that she is teaching and that is a very important characteristic that a professor should have. The tests weren't that hard; an in-class essay and short questions, but a lot of people had struggles with the map quizzes. I personally like the map quizzes because it was just memorization of 10-15 places on a map and did that right before class. There is a research paper that she gives, which is about 10 pages but you have the whole quarter to do it, and it can be about anything about Islamic Archaeology. Overall, it was one of the best classes I've taken.