Okay the simple thing is that you possibly can not know what grade you are going to get. He grades completely unfairly. He makes no comments whats so ever on essays, rather makes grammar corrections, then gives you a B/B- (WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN)

Okay so lets begin
First you have a ID, Map Quiz (the ID's are not hard as long as you put the correct information and memorize the info) The Map on the other hand makes no sence. He gives you locations, send you home and says google them. Literally the places he gives overlap one another so it makes absolutely zero sense... Anyways I got an A+ on the ID portion and a B on the map, combined I received an A for the exam (this is in week 4)

Then you have your first essay (4 pages, you CAN NOT pass 5). He cares more for grammar than content. Your introduction paragraph make or breaks you. Literally take it for him to read because if he dosent like you intro then you will get a B on the essay. INTRO IS MORE IMPORTANT THEN THE ENTIRE ESSAY. In addition, make sure you make your intro exactly I repeat exactly like the example he gives. He says you can write it differently, even approves it during office hours, then claims you did not do it exactly as he wanted.

Final is the same. Pay attention to page numeration, citations, sentence structures.

Advice from me is read up to week 4 as it is essential to for the ID exam, you can stop after. The essays he covers in lecture, you can just go back and incorporate in your essay.

Anyways, I got an A but this guy gave me ANXIETY. I really don't recommend since he is highly unorganized and dosent really seam to care much (even though he says he does). I learned things I didn't know before, it was interesting I am not going to lie, but the stress was not worth it.

Aslanian is an excellent instructor. Through 10 weeks, he covers an extraordinary amount of material, never sacrificing depth for breadth. Even if you know next to nothing about Armenia, you will come away with a vivid picture of the nation's past and present.

The negative review of this course rom this term is misleading and bitter in its assessment of the course. While Aslanian did have a habit of going over classtime by a few minutes, this was often due to technical issues during the class or (perhaps overly) comprehensive responses to student questions. Aslanian did an excellent job of encouraging students to participate in class discussions, going so far as to structure large parts of several classes to center around discussions of the course material. I found these discussions to be interesting, even though Aslanian took an active role in correcting students when they made historical errors in their arguments. This may come across to some students as being 'mean', but I learned a lot from Aslanian's correction and never felt as though he was acting out of a desire to rebuke or put down a student's contributions. On the contrary, he consistently rewarded and praised students who made meaningful contributions.

Aslanian gave comprehensive and detailed answers to student questions during class while also encouraging students to submit parts of their midterm and final papers for feedback before the due date. I did not make use of this myself but it was very comforting to know that I could get preliminary feedback for the major assignments. Aslanian provided detailed feedback to each of the papers and I felt that both were fairly graded, perhaps more stringently than other history classes I've taken.

I learned an immense amount taking this class, but it requires a significant time investment. If you are genuinely interested in Armenian history and are willing to put in the time to do the readings, come to lecture (Aslanian took attendance every class), participate, and pay attention during classtime, you will find this to be a very enriching and rewarding course. I highly recommend it. I only wish I had the chance to take Aslanian's other classes on Armenian history.

Don't take a class with Aslanian. He is the worst history professor at UCLA. He has no respect for his students. I don't understand why he teaches undergraduate level classes when he acts like it is such a waste of his time. He goes on tangents. He's disorganized. He's rude. He's cold. He's the worst. Don't do it. Don't take his class.

I would go as far as to say that this is the most miserable class I have taken thus far at UCLA, and it is not because of the course material. Aslanian is the worst professor I have had here. He was disorganized, mean, and disrespectful of us as students. First of all, he went over class time EVERY. SINGLE. CLASS. There was not one class when we finished at 1:45 like we were supposed to. Second, he puts students down. I've heard him rebuke more student comments than respond or praise them. He will quite literally tell a student, "that wasn't it. brownie points for trying." He wants us all to participate, but when he makes it so embarrassing to not give a perfect answer, then WHO WOULD WANT TO PARTICIPATE?! Third, he picks favorites. Aslanian would quite literally point to this student and ask him to "enlighten" the rest of the class. He had another favorite, too, but this one was less obnoxious. Notably, his favorites were always male students. Fourth, he's disorganized. He does not even know the due dates of his own assignments. He would say one due date in class, and another one would appear on the assignment on the website. He did not seem to really care, either. When I met with him and told him I was confused about when the final was due, he seemed annoyed that I just couldn't keep up with all his changed. It caused me an incredible amount of stress. Fifth, his lectures are less than satisfactory. His slides are divided into two sections of notes that don't really capture what he says while the slide appears. Moreover, he goes on so many tangents in a class it's hard to tell what history is important to the material and what isn't. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. Save yourself the misery.

While Prof Alsatian was definitely knowledgable about the course, it was so disorganized that it was overall a hugely negative experience. The midterm and final were both papers derived entirely from the texts, and the map quiz was incredibly easy. I got an A- with minimal effort.

The TAs absolutely make your grade though, so pick wisely and attend discussion sections, because they will offer really helpful advice for the direction the papers should take.

Dr. Aslanian is a fountain of knowledge. That being said, this class was a complete waste of time. Being Middle Eastern myself, I thought this class would be extremely interesting and informative. However, I found that the class was extremely politically focused and little to no focus was put on the culture of the Middle East. I was always taught in my history classes that "the past informs the present." However, there was no connection made to the present in this history class. The final lecture was supposed to be on the recent Arab uprisings, a topic of interest to many people, but Dr. Aslanian spent most of that lecture talking about Europe's role in World War II. This made no sense to me. Anyway, the readings are completely unnecessary, but you do need to go to discussion section for the points.
Super easy map quiz=10%
Discussion section=15%
Book review=20% (didn't read the book and got a B on it)
Take home midterm=25% (2 essays)
Take home final=30% (2 essays)
I really do not suggest taking this class as a GE unless you love hearing boring lectures about topics that don't pertain to the subject matter.

TL;DR
Don't take the class. If you do, don't do the readings and you'll be fine. Final grade: B+

Your success in this class depends on doing the readings as they are assigned and not leaving them to the last minute. Your grade is based on one take-home midterm, consisting of two essays, a take-home final, which is also in the form of two essays, and two quizzes. The professor's lectures are a bit unorganized, so I would recommend typing your notes. He is pretty picky when it comes to grading, but he's really approachable and encourages students to come to him for help on the assignments. He basically tells you exactly how you should write your papers to get the best grade possible.

WARNING: does not record lectures, does not post slides, and takes attendance by roll call. It is basic world history topics with a main focus on the middle east. The class is broken up into a 4 page book review (HAVE to read a book) and write about it, 5 reaction papers that were originally graded on quality but then got switched to completion, and the final which consisted of 2 3-page essays. The professor is super nice but has old-ish rules/tendencies with how he runs the class. Nice because there are no tests and not that many essays but you have to go to class and your engagement likely impacts your grade. Expect 100+ pages of reading a week from books and articles.

Overall, the class is meh. The first half of the course is what you expect from a normal history course, i.e. Wars, allies, kings and etc. You'll have a map quiz and 9 ID's. He'll give you 20 to study from and he will pick 9. I believe that exam is worth about 30% of your grade.

The following week, you have a take home midterm, he gives you the questions ahead of time. They have to be 4-5 pages each. You'll answer 2, so, your entire paper is 8-10 pages. This is worth about 25%.

He is a VERY picky grader. I think that has more to do with the class being so small that he nit-picks everything. That brings up another point, the class is so small but it took us close to 3 weeks to get our mid-term back. I wish he gave it back in time so I could've have done a P/NP(Which I will explain shortly).

The second half of the course gets very dull. He talks about the establishment of trade and printing presses. Very dry lectures. You do not learn much about the period of time other than the establishment of printing presses and trade. Who established what where. . This will lead you to your final. Another take home paper, 8-10 pages in total while answering 2 questions.

He tends to chastise the entire class for not answering question. The problem here is that he assigns so many readings. It comes up to be 150-200 pages a week. He says try to read at least half, but even then it seems a bit overkill because some of us have 2 or 3 other courses and the reading is just so much. Not to mention, most of the readings that are assigned are ALL the same but with different authors.

This was one of my toughest course at UCLA and I put in the time and effort in it and I only managed a B+. While my other courses this quarter I ended getting two A's putting in half the work. I personally felt that I deserved a better grade but I guess I'll have to chalk it up as a learning experience. Had he given our midterm back in time, I would've had my coveted 4.0 GPA for the quarter.

Yes, you can get an A in this course but you need the trifecta, Do the readings and ask and answer questions. Write in a manner that he approves and do well on your ID/ID exam.

The positives-
Class is small, so the class can work together and help each other out. It feels more like a capstone than anything else.

You do not have to buy the books. I got by without buying any, including his.Most of the readings are posted on CCLE.

The negatives-
Dry lecturer
Nitpicks your paper
Takes forever for him to get back your grade.
Tends to chastise the class frequently
Back to back "projects". Meaning, one week you'll have your ID/MAP exam, the following week you'll have to turn in your paper. We do have other courses and mid-terms to worry about, you know?

If I can go back and find a new course, I would. Not an enjoyable course. Only positive that came out of it was the entire class was on the same page.

P.S. He'll tell you about 100x his favorite city in the world is Venice.

This professor marks you down for your English! Regardless how well you know the material, he WILL grade your essay based on how well he likes your writing style, which is not a bad thing in itself, except that your knowledge and grasp of the class does NOT translate to doing well in his paper. I have gotten a worse grade in this class than in my other paper-related classes (and I have very consistently scored As in other essay-related classes, AND I put in way more effort in writing the paper for this class than any paper that I have ever written in other classes, so go figure). Going to writing centers help for most classes, but for this class even if you have your essay proofread multiple times, it will not mean anything if he does not like the way you write your paper. The prompts are extremely lengthy and synthesizing a thesis that encompasses all parts of his question will be challenging.

This class is very reading-intensive, and making it worse the lectures are often times disorganized. The reading materials are hard to understand (especially the Holt reading) and you will often end up wasting hours reading things that you will not remember.

His class is discussion-based which, although encourage active participation from the students, do not work well with the class as it is a survey class and therefore you need a coherent lecturer who could lecture you on all the intricacies and complexities of the reading.

TL;DR I do not recommend taking this class unless you really enjoy not having to deal with any in-class tests. The essay will mostly be graded on your writing style and not as much on what you know about the materials, which in my opinion is unfair. As the previous rater suggested the class consisted of two take-home exams and two map-quizzes as well as in-class participation.