Very knowledgeable and engaging professor! She truly cares about the course content and the students. As a non-traditional transfer student I was new to UCLA but Professor Arbabzadah was very responsive to my questions, offered excellent feedback on my midterm, and took the time to listen to my questions and concerns. I was so impressed with the depth of material relating to conspiracy theories that I also registered for another class she is teaching. I feel like I finished this class not only with a better understanding of what is going on in the world but a better writer as well. There are two essays in the class that are challenging but very doable if you listen to the lectures, take good notes, read the required readings and refer to the slides. The slides and even some of the readings are highlighted so if you put in effort and try to attend office hours for any questions or to go over your papers, you will do well in this class. I highly recommend this professor and any of the classes she teaches as the content is relevant and interesting.

This is the second time I've taken her, but the first time in person. With that being said, I would prefer the online version of this class. Her lectures tend to be a bit long and difficult to follow at times, making it much more manageable virtually. However, she structures them in a very straightforward way, making sure students know the answers to the questions she is posing. Those questions are asked on the midterm and final, so make sure you take good notes when she talks about them. The midterm and final are essays and are not too bad if you start them early enough. She is pretty lenient with her grading and claims you have to do the readings, but I never did and just incorporated some quotes from random articles into my papers and got an A on both exams. The class can be a drag sometimes but is very doable overall, and if you're looking for a pretty easy filler class, I'd recommend.

The class is pretty interesting and was an easy A in my opinion, you just have to make sure you put a lot of effort for the midterm and the final paper (due online during finals week). I read through most of the readings so that helped me out a lot, but I know a lot of people who didn't and just relied on the slides and did fine, so use your best judgment on whether or not you do them (most of them are really long but I felt like they helped me because I was able to use information from them to make my answers on the exam super detailed, which is key to doing well on it). Exam is 6 questions, you only answer 3- the first one was required and the other 2 you pick. Group relevant information together (hallmarks of a conspiracy theory, historical origins of conspiracy theories, scholarly perspectives on conspiracy theories, etc.) when you study and you should be fine, the questions were all pretty easy. Format for the final paper in Nushin's classes has changed since I took this class, but regardless you'll need to know the material well enough so that you can apply it in your writing (basically you're getting relatively recent news articles and you're discussing them by applying information from the class).

I feel like this class could have been interesting if explained well. it was so boring and the professor just lectures in a way where it just sounds like words but you understand nothing. also the midterm was just dumb because she expects you to show what you've learned but the questions are really specific and she says just answering the questions won't give you full credit.. like you have to write a bunch of irrelevant stuff just to show that you've learned something. anyways, would not recommend. sorry hope this helps :)

nushin is super super nice, she's pretty insane too but it doesn't matter because there's just a midterm (writing - 3 questions) and a final ten page paper so honestly you don't need to go to class or really know anything. overall, great class to take.

You only have to do a mid term test and a final paper, both of which are not too challenging if you go to lectures. The course is very interesting and a topic the professor is extremely knowledgeable on.