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!

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.

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.

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.

I took this class for the extra units I needed so I honestly didn't care for the material. I found it so boring. The professor doesn't record his lectures or post his slides so be aware. I stopped attending lectures after the midterm because I realized they weren't necessary for the midterm or the final. The professor himself is very passionate about what he teaches but I just couldn't get into the topic. I got a good grade without attending lectures so it's doable. For the midterm and final, just memorize what you're going to write and practice timed writing because you only have 50 minutes.

Other reviews for this class are legit. This class isn't too hard of a class and the workload is on the light side. The grade breakdown goes like: 20% discussion participation, 40% midterm, and 40% final. The participation points are easy to get (based on reading assigned primary sources beforehand and come to discussion sections to discuss them; the vast majority of the students got above 90% for this. The readings are not heavy either. Both the midterm and the final are basically timed writes—you have 50 mins in your discussion to write an essay that answers the prompt. Both prompts are assigned to you at the beginning of the course. They are not super hard to write but the only downside I think is that both exams worth so much of your overall grade that messing up one will be overly detrimental to your overall grade. My suggestion is to prepare for those in-discussion essays ahead of time and go to your TA's office hour to ask for guidance on what they are looking for and how to write solid essays within such a short time. Both essays require you to analyze primary source readings so my suggestion is to keep up with your weekly readings as the weeks go by. Don't get lazy and skip them—they really contribute to you getting a good grade. A lot of other reviews here say that lectures are not important and that you don't have to go—I have ambivalent feelings toward this take: I agree that since content taught by Professor Green during lectures are not tested in any way you don't necessarily have to go to them to do well in the class; but at the same time the lectures are very engaging and Professor Green teaches you a lot of interesting historical materials (though very broad and have little depth since this is a survey course that covers all of human history up to 600 CE). I went to every single lecture and did not think they were wasteful. Going to lectures and learning the materials can also be helpful for your midterm and final because you learn the historical context behind the primary courses you read, which will give you more stuff you can write about in your essays.

Not too hard of a class/GE overall. Take it if you don't mind in-class exams for your midterm and final.

This class is definitely an EASY GE. The professor is obviously very passionate about the subject and while attending lectures is not important, doing so felt appealing just because of the passion that exudes off him every class. He doesn’t post the slides, which may feel like a dealbreaker, but honestly all you really need is to attend the discussions. Success in the class is basically done by doing the weekly readings (you don’t need to buy a book, he posts screenshots of the texts and they’re also not particularly lengthy), participating/taking notes during discussion (strictly about the readings), and preparing for your midterm and final ahead of time (you literally know both prompts from the first day of class). If you’re still on the fence, JUST TRUST ME and TAKE THIS CLASS!!!

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.