I thought I would write a quick review for those who are planning to take this class as an online GE during summer:

There are basically only 2 aspects to the course if I remember correctly - one is to reply/post on the CCLE forum, and the other is a set of 3 papers you do over the 6 week period. All 3 papers are really really short (the first two are 5 pages and the last one is like 7 pages or something). Once I had detailed plans for each paper, I made 15 minute zoom appointments with my TA, who was really helpful. She gave me insight on what I was doing well and what needed to be improved. I ended up getting 100% on all 3 papers, and a A+ in the class. Dr. Kelley is really cool in real life but his recorded lectures were actually a little monotonous. The lecture lengths range, but it usually took me 3 hours to get through a 1 hour lecture because of the notes you have to take. He speaks really fast.

P.S. You don't actually have to do the readings, but you must have some general idea of what is going on because you will need to cite the book for the papers.

This class was a pretty easy GE, especially if you took APUSH in HS. But, this class was kinda different from APUSH where you learn a lot more about racism, discrimination, and identity in the US which was super interesting to learn from a different lens. Your grade was made up of two papers (35% each) and a discussion participation grade (30%). The grading of the paper and participation was entirely TA dependent where some were harder and gave more assignments while the TA I had just made sure you attended only with no outside assignments. This class is a lot of reading, but if you listen to the lectures, I found that I got by without not doing any reading from the textbook BUT I highly recommend reading the primary sources that he provides you since those help with your papers as sources. I took this alongside 3 other STEM classes, it was definitely an easy class to breeze by and was also really interesting too!

I am selling the complete lecture notes for this class for $20, reply to this to organize! (this will save you HOURS) :)

really enjoyed this class as a stem major who hates writing essays lmao. lectures were super engaging so i never got bored (although they were recorded and I watched them on 1.5xspeed). assignments were pretty fair and (weekly discussions and 2 essays). great/easy ge to take during a quarter in which you have other hard classes.

Professor Kelley is a great lecturer. He is witty and makes the content relevant. If U.S. history is at all interesting to you, this class is an easy A. I am a psychology major, so humanities may be more my thing, but regardless this class seemed pretty easy. The only grades are 2 papers worth 35% and participation in discussion (30%). Granted, I did learn that each TA runs their section differently. My TA was very flexible and graded us all rather fairly/lightly, with no outside assignments. However, I heard other TAs required long reflection assignments. Regardless, the content was easily digestible, and the paper prompts were interesting (albeit a bit complex). Overall, I would definitely deem this an easy GE if you are someone who can tolerate U.S. history and stay up to date on lecture material.

This class was super chill. For my TA we really only had to participate in discussion plus the midterm/final papers and some notes we had to take for the book discussion. I spent like no time on this class apart from the readings and got an easy A. Basically my advice would be: participate 2-3 times in discussion, spend some time on the essays and you'll get an A. I didn't have much interaction with Professor Kelley, but he was well organized and very reasonable with the assignments. Good class.

This is the second class I've taken with Prof. Kelley. His lectures are always super interesting, but honestly, you don't need to watch them to succeed in the class. Discussions are mandatory as is participation in section. Marina was my TA and I thought she was great. We had a small debate in section where we each had to speak at least twice. The final project was a policy proposal paper with a group in our section. My group happened to be awesome, but I know the experience varies with who you got matched with. The three books we needed were provided in PDF form. One of them you had to read for the debate, but the other two were not necessarily that important to keep up with. Overall, a super easy and informative class!

I am not a history person nor a reading person but I passed this class with an A after almost barely reading the books. This was the only class that required participation during discussion so that felt uncomfortable, but overall Javier (my TA) was extremely knowledgeable and helpful as well.
What really killed me for this class was that Professor Kelley mentioned we will be using one of the book that we read as a final project in the syllabus and on week 9, he completely changed that to a group essay that did not even necessarily need the book. It was tough having one week to come up with a 9 page-ish essay with people you barely or did not even talk to at all during discussion without having enough clarity on what the final prompt wants from us.
However, I still did pass with an A so I guess I have to say this class was easy compared to the work I put in.