I took this class because the grading curve looked really nice and it sounded like an interesting topic, but I was really disappointed with the class I ended up with. The lectures were thoroughly not engaging and she was very unclear about what she required from us. At the beginning of the course she said a good skimming of the readings would suffice for classroom discussions, but it became clear that you were expected to read many of the readings in full and have a deep understanding. It became overwhelming when we were asked to read 3 long novels in 3 weeks along with additional readings. The midterm and final were also very time consuming although they were take-home. You had 1 week to write just about 3000 words. Additionally, in my discussion section there were only 9 people enrolled and not everyone came to each section so participating and having a conversation with a limited amount of people was pretty difficult, but I feel like my participation graded dropped significantly just because there was no one to talk with. Overall, pretty disappointed.

Professor Livescu was very thorough in her lectures, and I found the class to be very interesting!! Most of the grade in the class was determined by papers however, and Livescu had a very specific and strict grading scheme that would lead to most of the class receiving B's. I worked pretty hard in the class and still got an A-, but I thought the class was very informative on the modern Middle East, which is an area that is often skimmed over in the news as "unrest in the Middle East." This is more of a cultural analysis on the past century of the Middle East, and Livescu does NOT cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (so if this is something you were looking for in the class, be warned that it is not covered). Some of the documentaries we watched moved me to tears, and I really enjoyed learning about the modern culture!