I feel like this Professor is OK but not my favorite so far. So this is the grading rubric for the class:

Quizzes: 8

Each Quiz worth: 12.5%

That's it...

Basically whatever score you get in the quizzes will then be calculated for your final grade. It sucks because you either may not do well and it weighs down your grade or you may do well throughout the quarter. There is lots of reading so take note of that. Find people who will be your study buddy. If you cannot take the quiz, he will offer you an assignment instead. Go to the Writing Center because he is a harsh grader. LIKE REALLY HARSH. FYI, the quizzes are timed and open-notes but in reality, you may not have a lot of time to go back to the assigned reading to find the answer. The quizzes are 30-minutes long. Questions range from 18-21. Like I said, if you are a good test-taker, take his class. I had to switch my grade type because I screwed up on the first quiz. Honestly, I wouldn't recommend him because I get extreme anxiety during timed tests. I would recommend Professor Leslie Johns (123 International Law) with TA Abigail or Kye Barker (116B Continental Political Thought) or 149 with Sasha Issenberg (Presidency). These are the best professors I've taken and lenient with gradings.

Under normal circumstances, this would probably be a great class. The material is, for the most part, fairly interesting. However, I absolutely HATE when lectures are pre-recorded and that is it. Every single lecture was posted during the time of class, so why not just have class? I understand it is tough for international students to attend because of timezones, but there is no need to punish everyone for that. He offered office hours for 2 hours when class would be, but I don't pay for a glorified Rosetta Stone. I want to actually engage with the professor and there was no chance to do this here except for office hours. The quizzes were for the most part a decent difficulty. They were difficult at first, but you learn that it is all Command+F for the readings and lectures. This made it very difficult to get motivated to learn, because I knew exactly how to do well.

There was also some issues with him being the least accommodating professor ive ever had. If you miss a quiz, you have to write a 2000 (!!!) word essay. That isn't inherently awful, but 8 2000 word essays is insane. There was a girl who had a family member die, and he made her write that essay within 2 days and apparently graded it ridiculously hard. For this alone, I would not take him again. Lack of accommodation in these difficult times is the best way to show lack of respect for students. Overall, I am just disappointed in this class. I was really looking forward to it. If you can deal with the online structure, then you'll like this class. But if you like engagement, then stay away.

Professor Chatterjee is one of the best professors I have had at UCLA. His lectures were interesting and thorough. The one thing that may turn people away is the 16-20 page final paper (half of your grade), but there isn't a midterm or a final exam. There are unit quizzes on ccle which account for the other half of your grade- if you pay enough attention in class, you can skim the readings.

Judging from the reviews before me, this seems to be a polarizing class. I feel horrible for the person who had to write a paper when her family member died. That is not okay that Professor Chatterjee did that. 2000 words is not a realistic amount to be written in the span of a few days. It's true that the quizzes are the make or break, and it is completely true the lectures are 100% recorded. If that isn't your thing, I do not recommend you take this class for how ever long COVID continues to force us to be online. I managed to get an A in this class by reading every single assigned reading (seriously, every single one, sometimes twice) and by watching every single lecture. I'd take notes and reverse engineer an outline for each piece we read, trying to emulate what it may have looked like for the author to have drafted it. If you do that, chances are you'll be okay, but the workload will become significantly heavier. The quiz questions aren't bad, but he'll always throw in a "curve-breaker" or two (metaphorically speaking because the course was *not* curved). I'd say 75% of the questions forced you to think critically, 25% of them had you recall weird details nobody remembered. That said, he was really good about dropping frequently missed questions. I'd certainly take his class again because I really love the asynchronous format and the content; but, if asynchronous lectures and increased workload because of the online format is not your thing, seriously don't risk it. The stakes were ridiculously high in this class.

I can not say enough about how good of a professor Chatterjee was. In the midst of all the covid-19 scare, he reached out and constantly made sure that we as students were doing okay, and was always available. The concepts of this class were a bit difficult, and some of the readings were pretty unwieldy, but going to office hours really helps since he's so knowledgeable and willing to help.

The grading of the course was based on weekly quizzes and a final paper.