TL/DR: There's a reason why this professor gets such good reviews. The class is simply designed, the material is very interesting to learn (albeit some of it is incredibly depressing), and Terraciano is a great professor who actively cares for his students. This class, although affected by strikes in Fall 22, still managed to be enlightening.

For my full description/grade overview/etc, go here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15vILblHwWrnV7KnB-sOFzTRnQE2QPA7nmHxj4gdNKBU/edit?usp=sharing

I never went to a single lecture and only read select excerpts from 1/4 books when I had to write an essay, and still ended with an A. This class is chill. It's just based off of 4 essays, so as long as your paper is decent and meets the requirements, you'll be fine.

I genuinely have so much appreciation for this professor, he is THE sweetest and most caring ever. He was so accommodating, especially during the TA strike, this man facilitated my life and I am so thankful for having him as a professor. you can tell he knows so much and enjoys this subject. I cannot recommend him enough. There was no homework, only 4 essays which were all pretty manageable and TA didn't grade harshly.

One of the best history professor ever. Prof. Terraciano is such an amazing professor that actually cares about his students. The class was a lot of fun. 2 essays and 2 take home exams(midterm and final). He proved most of the books for the class which made it really affordable. Totally recommend taking the class.

Took this class and overall it was easy. The lectures are optional and the prof just has slides that are read from. The discussion section is mandatory and useful depending on the TA. There is no homework but there are weekly readings but it's ok if you don't read them. There are 4 essays, each one increases in percent value. The TA grades the essays so make sure you listen to the discussion section because they usually tell you what they are personally looking for in the essay. Overall the class was easy to handle and if you read the notes/comments from graded essays and use this as a guide for the next essay you will receive a good score.

Terraciano is a dope professor. He is a very talented lecturer and an expert in his field, very passionate about his awesome research. He does require about four texts (pm on reddit if u need pdfs mourningst4rr) which are incredibly useful and interesting. He does require a lot of reading but I would say that none of it is too difficult but only helps you in your essays. Your grade is broken into 4 papers, discussion attendance (mandatory) and I think thats it. Easy GE, dope content, professor is understanding. Would recommend.

I took this class as a GE and honestly, I wasn’t super impressed by it. Don’t get me wrong, the material was definitely interesting and the professor and TAs are very sweet. With that said, I wouldn’t say the course is as amazing as previous reviews made it out to be. For reference, the class was made up of 4 essays (2 of which were considered “exams”). More specifically, the breakdown is as follows:
-Essay 1 (based on primary sources): 15%
-Midterm exam (covering first half of the course): 15%
-Essay 2 (based on primary sources): 25%
-Final exam (cumulative): 35%
-Attendance and participation in weekly discussion section: 10%
To be completely honest, I attended very few lectures (not because I didn’t want to but because I couldn’t). Thankfully, the professor audio recorded his lectures and uploaded lectures from a previous quarter for students who couldn’t make it to class. The lectures cover the overarching topic for the week. The professor does a great job of explaining the weekly reading through these lectures so I definitely recommended attending or listening to lectures. The content itself I found to be VERY interesting. A lot of it covers issues of gender, race, ethnicity, culture, and so much more. It can feel overwhelming at times but the professor does not expect you to memorize everything explained in the lectures or readings but rather he wants you to gain a good enough understanding of the material to write thoughtful papers about it.
As previous reviews have stated, there is A LOT of reading for this course. Unlike other courses, you cannot do well in this course if you don’t do the readings because the class is quite literally structured around the readings. For the most part, these readings are quite interesting and insightful. However, almost all of the assigned readings are primary sources which meant that many students had to re-read the passages in order to fully understand what was being said. There are some weeks where the reading is lighter than others but overall it is quite a lot. I was usually able to do the reading in 2-3 hours but that’s mainly because I took notes as I read (which I HIGHLY recommend as it helped a lot when it came to completing essays). With that said, I would not be intimidated by the amount of reading you have to do. If you dedicate a few hours of your day to completing the weekly readings, you should be fine.
Discussions ran for about 50 minutes and usually consisted of group discussions about the readings. For my section, students were often put into groups and assigned passages to discuss. Groups usually talked for 30-40 minutes and when each group was done talking, the whole section would reconvene and we would have a big group discussion about all of the readings for that week. The structure of discussion usually fluctuated as we were assigned different amounts of readings per week. That meant that during weeks with less readings, we would be put in a group of 4-5 and would be given one reading per group. During weeks with more readings, we would be split into groups of 2-3 and given 2-3 readings to discuss. Discussions were not overwhelming and were entirely guided by the TA. I am grateful to have had a very kind TA who did not pressure students to participate but rather created a space where students were encouraged to share their ideas (even if they weren’t accurate or didn’t make sense). Overall, I think discussions were the best part of this class.
Essays and exams were my least favorite part of this course. For essays, students are posed a question and asked to answer it using the primary sources given in the readings. The essays were to be 2-3 pages long and students were usually asked to use at least 3 sources. While this may sound easy, it proved to be quite difficult. Most prompts consisted of multiple questions and students were expected to fully answer every aspect of the prompt. This was very similar to the way exams were set up. For our midterm, we were given a quote and asked to answer a prompt for that quote. However, you also had to incorporate at least 3 other primary sources aside from the source the quote was from and answer every part of the question under 1,000 words. As for the final, it was split into 3 sections (essentially 3 essays). Section/essay 1 (1,000 words) you were given a prompt that covered all topics discussed during the quarter. For my quarter, we were asked a question that asked us to incorporate 8 examples (thus, 8 sources) into the body of the essay and a final example in the conclusion. This was nearly impossible for many students and I found there to be a lot of confusion surrounding how to go about addressing the prompt. For section/essay 2 (500 words), we were asked a question covering material from the second half of the course. For section/essay 3 (500 words), we were asked a question based on an image shown either during lecture or one that was in the readings. These last two sections were easier to complete as they were less demanding and could be answered fully given the word limit, but keep in mind that you also had to include at least 2 other sources in each of these essays. While this can all seem a bit nerve racking, each assignment is completely manageable. The prompts were pretty straightforward and the professor and TAs ensured to provide adequate resources for students to do well. One thing I will say though is that the word/page limits on assignments made it difficult to fully incorporate everything that was asked of us. Many students would get feedback from TAs asking them to elaborate or explain a point made in the essay but it would prove nearly impossible to do so seeing as there was already so much to be covered in the essay. There was little to no room to fully elaborate on a point without sacrificing space that could be used for another requirement which was quite frustrating. Another thing that was quite frustrating was the amount of time we were given to complete the final exam (worth 35% of our overall grade). While we were given 2 weeks to complete each essay and about a week to complete the midterm, we were essentially given three days to complete the final (opened Friday evening and closed Tuesday at noon). Many students felt unprepared to complete the final in such little time and felt as though the work they turned in was not their best because of it. Overall, this class is not what I expected. It was definitely not difficult though. I would say that it is quite easy to pass this class but maybe not as easy to get an A. If you are considering taking this class, I would still recommend it! As long as you engage with the material and communicate with your TA, you should be totally fine. Good luck!

This class was hands down one of the best GEs I've taken. There is a lot of reading that is helpful for writing the essays, so if you hate reading I wouldn't necessarily recommend this class. But other than that, the lectures were very engaging and interesting, and the class load is really not bad. There are basically four 3-page essays that are easy, and if you get David Castaneda as your TA, he's extremely lenient with grading. If you find Latin history interesting and are looking for an easy GE, take this class.

I took this as a GE, and truly enjoyed this class primarily because I was genuinely interested about learning about Indigenous interactions with the Spaniards. The textbooks and assigned readings for this class are crucial to doing well on assessments.

By no means is this an easy GE. The readings are fairly easy reads...just A LOT of them. In my opinion, the take-home essays were not too challenging as long as you did the readings, but the final was quite lengthy. Although, Professor Terraciano is VERY CLEAR about what he wants done and how to approach it; his clarity when it came to assignments was super helpful. Definitely know that this GE will require a good amount of time, but if you're interested in the subject, then it won't feel like a drag.

Overall, Professor Terraciano is very clear on what he wants done for an assignment, is understanding of circumstances caused by covid, and is helpful when it comes to his office hour. I enjoyed this class.

This class was a great GE. Professor Terraciano taught it very well and we are only graded on papers and participation so as long as you write decent essays and show up to class you can get a high grade.