This professor is sooooo awesome and funny. Plus, he's the type of professor who wants to know every one of his students well. After I attended two of his study sessions for the final exam, he remembered who I was and we had a good chat after class. Besides his great personality, the class itself should not be overwhelming because the reading is moderate and it can be shortened down by your TA. The lectures can be dry and I do admit that I sometimes fell asleep in class, but the professor does sprinkle his humor and his enjoyable personality in the lectures. There are two essays in the class and no in-class midterm because one of the essays is considered the midterm. For the final, he passed out a sheet of potential questions he will ask and the answers should be in the form of an essay. Furthermore, professor doesn't determine the grade. Your TA decides your grade. Overall, take this class if you need to fulfill a GE or if you're a potential history major whose focus is ancient world history.

Professor Mellor is very knowledgeable about the subject and his lectures are quite entertaining. I would caution against taking History 20 for your historical analysis GE, because it covers thousands of years of history across the entire world, making it an unfocused course. This is not Professor Mellor's fault, it's just the nature of world history. I ended up with an A, but it was the result of a lot of hard work and having a great TA. Overall, he is a great professor, but History 20 is definitely not an "easy GE."

Professor Mellor is round, jolly, cheerful, has white hair, and a white beard. Sound familiar?
If you stay good by attending every lecture, read the stuff he asks you to read, don't procrastinate on the essays, he really is Santa Claus because he'll give you what you want if you stay on top of things.
A very doable class, a very competent and intelligent professor. He has a passion for waht he teaches, and that's all that we could ask for in a professor.
Take his class!
Some side notes
- Attendence checks, 3 or 4 times a quarter, he performs attendance checks.
- For our finals, he gave us 9 potential prompts. On the day of the finals, he chooses 5 of them. You choose 3 to write on. The 9 prompts are given 2 weeks before the finals.Very manageable.
Excellent professor.
This man is Santa Claus.

First lecture, you should climb into his lap and tell him what you want for Christmas next year. Cause he's fucking Santa!!!

History 20
Good class, Mellor is an interesting teacher who sprinkles in a few random personal anecdotes to keep things entertaining. The only problem I had with the class is the fact that your grade is purely dependent on your TA. Workload is two essays and a final of three in class essays plus whatever writing assignments your TA gives you for discussion, all graded by your TA. So if you get a TA who grades overly harshly for a GE class, you could end up having a bad time. I still managed an A, and most of the TA's seemed nice. Mine was just a dick. So keep that in mid, and if you don't like the looks of your TA SWITCH DISCUSSIONS. I wish I had.

Mellor is a fantastic lecturer, and his powerpoints are actually useful. Also, he provides information in his lectures that is not in the book, so it's important to go to lecture. He is very knowledgeable, and the reading supplements are useful and interesting. For the midterm and final, you're given a study guide of terms and essay questions to know, and this makes studying soo much easier.
I would recommend taking this class with him-- I had no interest in ancient history before, but he made it interesting and gives you a broad scope of the development of societies all over the Eurasian continent.

Your grade is basically based on your TA. Mellor is a good lecturer, and keeps them interesting. He also knows what he's talking about: he doesn't just reteach the book. Interesting class.

i never went to lecture once but i had the best ta in the world, srdjan. my friends in other discussions told me they loved their TAs too. basically, i got an A+ in this class without EVER waking up at 8am and dragging my ass to rolfe at 9:30. discussions were awesome, papers were doable and interesting, and ya..the class rocked.