I have zero clue why there are so many negative reviews here. Soraya does tend to ramble on and sometimes gives you barely any time to write down info on slides. But besides that, the class was exciting, and I enjoyed writing the 2 essays. I think Soraya is a very kind and accommodating professor, easy to approach. She had a very solid review, feel like I am well-prepared for the final exam. Your grade does depend a lot on the TA as they grade your participation and your essay you can take Meg as your TA she's sweet and gives good feedback on essays. I think this is one of my favorite Ges and I think it is well worth taking especially since it fulfills both historical analysis and diversity. I would highly recommend it and would retake it.

I stopped going to lectures after week 3 as they were too boring to pay attention. Her lectures are not engaging, but her slides are posted and they give just enough information to do well in the class. Luckily the sections are engaging and interesting, and you can learn a decent amount from that There is a ton of reading that we discuss during section, but as long as you know the general overview of the reading you'll be able to contribute. We had a participation grade in section, but I am not sure how we were graded because I highly doubt he knew our names. The midterms are essays, so you are not forced to actually know the material until the final. As long as you follow the guidelines of the essay and use the sources they want you to, the grading is extremely easy. For her final, as long as you know general overview of things and most of the terms, you'll be set.

Her lectures were honestly kind of useless, not that it mattered since you were specifically told not to reference them for the essays. There is a lot of reading, which the mandatory discussions depended on, but you can get by if you pay attention to the discussions and have any kind of background on the 20th century to provide your own commentary (for participation points.) Grading was pretty easy on the essays, which make up the vast majority of your grade.

Only reason I'm giving an average rating is b/c of the TA. This class is very dry in my opinion and your grade depends more on the TA than the professor. The reading is a lot every week but after week 4, I just looked up summaries of each one. Mainly b/c participation mattered in discussion. There was a take-home midterm essay and two more essays. The final was some short answers and one long essay. Idk how I got this grade but if you take this class and get a nice TA, you should be fine. Just be warned that the material is kinda boring and that the professor is all over the place. Some of her slides still say from 2010. But I wouldn't say its necessary to attend all her lectures, just look over the slides after since she posts them.

selling the books required for this class for cheap! text **********

DREADFUL lecturer. Had her for History 3C. When I first signed up for the class, I was expecting to learn intriguing HISTORY of science, just like the course title states. Stuff like history of the discovery of DNA structure, history of nuclear weapon, history of chemical warfare, etc. But instead, all I've learned were ETHICS of these scientific inventions/movements, which were something I totally did not expect nor even have any interest whatsoever. One of our essay was about the ethics of gender roles in regards to Rosalind Franklin, NOTHING about the history of DNA construction or whatsoever.

Well that's just my rant about the misleading title of the course. Now about the class itself...About 150 pages of completely unnecessary readings per week. Seriously, I fell asleep after reading 10 pages of week 1 assignment, and we never even talked about them in class/discussion. If you are precautious about those GEs that can be more difficult/time consuming than your core classes, definitely add this class to your list.

Let's see...Oh. For our discussions, we had to submit some kind of a discussion topic into the CCLE forum before the start of class. But there were times when these forums never opened until the hour before class begin, so we had no choice, but either to procrastinate until the last hour, or like me, don't even bother at all and accept the 0 with dignity, then argue about the inefficiency of the whole system. The lecture room is like 80 degrees every day, the lecturer is never prepared to teach, technology inefficiency, and list goes on with all other quintessencial elements that delineates a terrible lecturer. Sorry for my terrible grammar; I'm writing this at 2:00 am of my precious spring break night because it just feels so essential.

TL;DR The title of the course is a complete bullshet, and if you want to do well in this class, pray for a chill TA.

Boring lecturer, creates a script for the lecture and reads it in such a monotonous tone for the entire lecture. Wouldn't recommend her. Had her for History 3C.