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.

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.

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.