I took this class a few years ago but this was one of the best classes I took at UCLA. I took this class for fun, my major wasn't classics or history and I had never read the Ancient Greek and Roman biographers beforehand (or even heard of them) but wow, this class's readings blew me away. We read a selection of biographies by Plutarch, Suetonius, Tacitus, and the Greek Alexander Romance if I am remembering correctly. I didn't attend many lectures but I still did relatively well in the class. We had 2 essays and 2 blue book exams which were passage identification. I'm graduating next quarter but I look back to this class as the one which has stuck with me the most from my time at UCLA.

Professor Gurval refused to accommodate me despite having the CAE office contact him- and demanded that I attend class in person when I physically could not go (and CAE literally told him this). He refuses to provide any zoom links to any students, even if they had tested positive for COVID. At the end of the quarter he just told me to drop the class, despite the only missing one minor assignment.

The class itself had difficult to understand material and he would often have un-detailed slides that would have just a few words, and would spend 15 minutes on each slide. It's hard to tell what exactly needed to taken down as notes. I will say that the only upside to this course is that he seems very passionate about what he is teaching, so it makes the course material a little easier to engage with. Honestly, he doesn't seem that bad if you had him in a seminar because he's somewhat personable- but the fact that it was a 30 person class made it even worse (and mind you, about 1/3 of the class ended up dropping due to how much work we had to do for a GE) because he grades everything rather than TAs, but is still distant. The amount of work you need to do for this class is a lot, especially considering that we had 2 x 4 page essays due right before the final- and scattered quizzes throughout the quarter. I would recommend this course ONLY IF it's taught with TA's, and if you have nothing else left that can first your schedule.

Professor Gurval is great and extremely knowledgeable about his subject. The class is not focused on history so much as it is very heavy on interpretation of what biographers thought and how they viewed their subjects, reminiscent of an English course. The course was interesting, but towards the end of the course the assignments sort of stacked up so that we had two papers due within a week of the final. The professor also continued to grade me down when he didn't agree with an argument I made and even when I applied his advice and criticisms to my essays. The midterm and final were a lot of work in which you have to write 4 essays about different biographers and their work. Other than this, the course was very interesting.