I have the class online because of the pandemic. Dr. Green is a fantastic lecturer and wants you to enjoy the materials. The grades however depend on your Ta because your letter grade depends on three essays only. So, if you meet a harsh Ta it will NOT be an easy A. In my case I have Ha as my TA who is fantastic and lenient!

Disclaimer: this was during COVID-19. I came into this class expecting it to have a heavily workload, but it honestly was pretty light. There was no “busy work” nor tests in the class – our entire grade was determined by three essays. On top of that, we had to watch podcasted lectures, read the textbook, and read primary source documents every week. Discussion sections were mandatory, but if you have a good TA these are extremely helpful for midterm essay preparation.

The lectures were very engaging. Each 80-minute-podcast was accompanied by a PowerPoint filled with visual aids. Honestly, I didn’t read the textbook because the lectures and supplemental readings covered most of the material. Definitely read the primary sources though because your essay grades were predicated on your understanding and explication of these materials. The midterm essays (4-pages double spaced) required us to select a visual source (essay 1) or textual source (essay 2) from a select time-frame and write about their historical contexts and speculate about their purposes. The final essay asked us to synthetise textual and visual material to discuss religion in an 8-page paper. Don’t panic though, my TA was very lenient in grading the papers – far easier than say an APUSH essay in high school.

This class is graded based on three essays and nothing else. In the syllabus, it states that attendance and participation in discussion sections are mandatory, but they are not included in the grade composition, so I am unsure how it is enforced. Participation in discussions is probably important to get to know your TAs, though, who determine your entire grade. Lectures, which are podcasts recorded by the professor, are not required and are not needed to get a good grade from my experience. I personally did not have this issue, but because the grade is entirely based upon the grading difficulty of the TA's, you have to kind of get lucky with which TA you get to get a good grade. The class workload is very light, which is nice, but no extra credit or grade fluffing assignments are offered so you have to be a good essay writer to get a good grade in this class.

This class is okay as an easy GE. I managed to just scrape by with an A-. The breakdown is 20% discussion attendance / participation, 40% on the first midterm, 40% on the final. The 20% discussion attendance / participation is easy, you read some primary sources and discuss them during your discussion. The midterm and final, he gives you the prompt in advance, and during your discussion session, you write an in class essay answering the three parts of the prompt. You only have 50 minutes to write, and since they don't give you a rubric or anything in advance, I didn't really know how to tackle the prompt. You also have to attend lecture since the professor doesn't post slides. I found the professor really boring during lecture and ended up using the optional textbook I found online in order to learn.

I ended up getting a B+ on my midterm, and a B on the final, and didn't really understand why since my TA left pretty vague comments on what was wrong with my midterm. This kind of sucked since 80% of your grade is determined by two in class papers, and you don't even really know what you did wrong on either of them. You should outline your essay in advance, show it to the TA during office hours, and have the TA approve it before the midterm and final for your best chances at an A. If you are just looking for the A-, then it's alright, just not fun.

There is literally just an in class midterm and a take home paper final. That is all. So, workload is obviously manageable but there is a LOT of content to be covered in this class. The lectures aren't technically mandatory (he doesn't take attendance) but he does not post the lecture slides on BruinLearn, in an attempt to encourage students to come to class. Green is so knowledgeable on the subject that it may sometimes become overwhelming-- a lot of his lectures are often so packed with information that I would definitely recommend doing the weekly readings so that you know what's going on. There isn't a lot of background information provided, he kind of throws you into all of the content because he is so familiar with it, so you are going to need to be proactive and learn on your own if you want to do well. That being said, very straight forward midterm and final. If you put in the time and work, you will get an A.

I will be fully honest, I did not go to lecture past Week 2, and was fully prepared for the midterm & final just by reviewing the lecture slides on my own, attending discussion, and doing the readings. This class is NOT work-heavy at all, very short discussion once a week, I just wasn't super interested in the content. Nile Green is amazing though. He's a great professor and a very likable guy, so you might want to attend lecture just for those reasons. Would definitely take as a History lower-div or GE again.

Grade is composed of 2 papers and discussion section participation

This class only had 2 assignments: the midterm (40%) and the final (50%) and the remaining 10% is from discussion participation. I think this class really depends on your TA. Since the midterm is worth so much, if you don't get a good grade on it, the final becomes a lot more stressful. My TA was really strict and I felt like the guidelines for the paper were pretty vague, which wasn't too great as everything is graded by the TA.

Due to the TA strike, we weren't even able to get access to our midterm grades so I had to reach out via email and ask, and this was around Week 8/9 which was a first for me at UCLA. Participation also matters in section so be sure to read the reading assignments before attending. I didn't really go to lecture because the professor doesn't allow you to take notes during his class which I found to be a waste of my time so I instead would always make time to review the lecture slides and take notes on things I found important. In general, taking this class kind of felt like a gamble because there was so little information to base my projected grade on. It's definitely one of the easier GE's but I really didn't like how there were only 2 assignments worth so much, so I would generally advise you to find either an easier GE or switch to a discussion with a chill TA.

easy GE class. All we had us one midterm paper and one final paper and then discussion section once a week that was mandatory. I rarely went to class and did well in the class. If you want an easy history GE this is a good one. Teacher is super passionate too.

Prof Green is very charming and well-spoken. The lecture: Some key dates, places and people hand written on the chalkboard then he lectures for the rest of the class. Most of the class is his verbal lecturing so if you are not there to take down verbatim what he says-it'll get confusing to borrow notes from someone who just wrote a few dates that he wrote on the board. There are no slides or lectures posted online but he assigns weekly readings that include primary sources. You don't HAVE to read them but if you go through them the class makes so much more sense so if you skip a day you won't be totally confused. His midterm was a take home paper. He provided 2 questions from each of the weeks 1-5 and we had to choose one and write a paper on it using that weeks primary sources, readings and lectures. I did not try my hardest on it and was a little scatterbrained and I got a B. He writes e-mails back very fast and I've been to his office hrs once and he seemed approachable. He can come off a tad intimidating but you can tell he just wants students to learn. I am in week 9 but the final is the same format of the midterm except it is in class. He is going to give us a week in advance to look and study the question so on final day we come in and write the essay on the spot. Overall, he is a good prof and very passionate and colorful in his teaching style. He is also very open-minded and provides all different historical views! Good prof, take him if the actual subject matter is of slight interest to you. So if you can handle a class that has no online post of lectures-no slides, only a midterm/final essay style but with a good prof relaying it to you-then take it!