I was a little intimidated to take a 'literature' class. Actually, I enrolled in this class the morning of the first week of the quarter, and so I wasn't sure what to expect. However, I found myself thoroughly enjoying it. The class is designed in a way that's 'discussion-driven if that makes sense. The professor and the students are talking about the chapters and the discussion flows very naturally in that way. If you couldn't make the live online lectures, you could make up that participation by posting and responding to questions and comments on Slack. Professor was also easily reachable on there. We had short quizzes every other week about the chapters that were assigned, 1 midterm, and a final. The midterm was like 10 questions and we had to pick 8 to answer in a couple of sentences. I liked that it was more synthesizing or critical thinking type of q&a rather than knowing very specific details about the book. And it was graded leniently so that you didn't have to have profound meanings or interpretations of the books to get a good grade. The final was my favorite. It was completely up to us about what direction we wanted to take it. I chose to make a video, but blogs, tweets, traditional essays, art,[ really anything] was all acceptable and as long as the effort was put in, a good grade was almost guaranteed. I very much enjoyed this class and would take it again. Good luck!

I thoroughly enjoyed taking this class with Professor Shneyder. He created a supportive environment where all students felt comfortable asking questions or sharing their opinion. The course readings, movies, and art all came together to provide a well-rounded view of Russia during this time period. The professor provides a class without bias and encourages students to deeply examine why we perceive Russia the way we do. I wouldn't necessarily call this an easy class, but I would encourage anyone who is interested in widening their perspective on Russia to take it.

I think the historical grade distributions speak for themselves. This class is not only an easy A but an easy A+.

Grading is based on quizzes, participation, film diaries, a midterm paper, and a final assignment. Nothing is done under a strict time constraint, making it a class that you can put on the back burner for weeks on end.

Quizzes have no time limit and simply test whether you have paid the slightest bit of attention to the syllabus/prescribed films.

Participation comes from posting to the course Slack page. If you are the kind of person to wait until the last minute to complete assignments, this grading category will work splendidly in your favor: the overwhelming majority made their first and last posts in the Slack page during finals week.

The film diaries can be whatever you want them to be, as long as they're around 250 words long and show that you've engaged with the films from class. You can literally write down bullet points on a film as you watch it and get full credit. 5 are mandatory, and the other 5 count for 2% extra credit toward your final course grade if you elect to do them.

Let me pause for a moment to draw your attention to that last sentence. You can get a total of 10% extra credit toward your final grade just by writing down bulleted notes for 5 five films. For perspective, since I did well on my midterm paper, I only needed to get somewhere in the 50's or 60's on the final to get an A in the class. All because of the extra credit. And that's pretty wild.

The midterm paper tasks you with analyzing a scene from a prescribed film. Focusing on the stylistic devices the directors employ—cinematography, mise en scène, and editing—you discuss how the scene contributes to the meaning of the film in under 1000 words. This counts for 25% of your grade. If you play your cards right and get a good grade in this assignment, you can literally fail the final and get an A in the class.

For the final, you can either write a 6-to 8-page research paper comparing/contrasting any element of any two films from the class or do a creative project with an accompanying explanation of your stylistic choices. This counts for 40% of your final grade.

Although I paid minimal attention to this class and nearly never attended lecture or discussion, I very easily got an A+. I found this class interesting and still did my own research and viewings outside of class, but you definitely do not need to pay attention to everything covered in the class to do well. Take this class if you want the easiest (and most interesting) A you have ever achieved.

This class was not difficult, but it was super boring. Prof. Shneyder is a dry lecturer, and he just paces around the room looking at the ground and taking unnecessary pauses in between his sentences. Grading consisted of discussion participation (easy), a midterm paper (also easy), and mostly a final paper (doable).

This class is very fun. It's pretty interesting and there is almost no work whatsoever in this class. Every week we would have to watch a movie and then write one page of just things we thought about the movie (these could just be bullet points as that's what I did). There was also weekly presentations in discussion from different groups about the movie that was watched that week but these were extremely easy.
There are 2 essays in this class: one 4-5 page essay in the middle of the year analyzing a certain sequence in a movie and then another 4-5 page essay at the end of the quarter that would be a critique of the film you made with your group (this was the final project). However, because of Coronavirus, this final film was amended so that you could either just write a screenplay or record a film by yourself if you hadn't already filmed something with your group. Then, the final essay would be written about whatever option you chose.
Professor Shneyder himself is a pretty boring lecturer but I found the content interesting enough to make up for it.
All in all, this class is extremely easy and requires very little work to get an A. If you like film and history then I highly recommend taking it.

Professor Shneyder is one of the most thoughtful, engaging professors I've ever had. Never before had I seen a student ask a question and, when the professor didn't know the answer, have him actually get back to the student in the next lecture with a well-researched and thoughtful answer. The class content was intriguing, shedding light on events that you've definitely briefly heard about or know, but actually getting a real, unedited point of view this time. The discussions for this class were great too, really engaging and content rich. Would 100% recommend.

If you consider yourself interested in movies, maybe you've flirted with the art-house genre, then it's imperative you take this class — you will get a lot out of it. A lot of people take this class cause they know it will be easy and they have no interest in watching old movies or talking about them, and for those people, I say: get out. You are going to be bored out of your mind, get nothing out of it, and overpopulate what would otherwise be a nice community of active and engaged students. Not that I discount other perspectives and people who don't like to speak up in discussion or class, but there were so many people I talked to who were extremely disinterested in the content, but knew it was an automatic A. It's just frustrating to see those kinds of people in a class such as this. Professor Shneyder is a gem, he is so kind, and I love the ideas he invoked in the survey of Russian film. 10 weeks is truly not enough, but I think he did a fantastic job curating the films we watch and provoking interesting questions about the material. My only critique is that I wish he interacted with the students more during lectures and lectured less. On the last day of class we had an inclusive conversation about the nature of "Russian film" and it was only then did I feel super excited to be surrounded by the film lovers in this class and we touched on some really interesting topics. This class would have worked much better with more hybrid seminar elements. The Slack page is a terrific addition to the class format, but I wish we could have had even more conversation during lecture and discussion, and it took a little while for people to get comfortable on Slack. Suryansu Guha is a funny and engaging TA, I enjoyed what he offered to the course as well. Both Shneyder and Guha are great during office hours I highly recommend you take advantage of those.

Shneyder is an epic professor and this class is epic for those who are interested in the subject. It is quite important that you have at least a slight interest in Soviet History to stay engaged with the class, but if you are engaged with the material, the class is not too hard. There is a decent amount of reading but a lot of it is for personal knowledge and how much you learn in this class depends on the effort you put into completing these readings (and videos). Shneyder connects all the material spectacularly, presenting different opinions and perspectives and inviting students to think from different viewpoints. For a topic as controversial as this, professor Shneyder does a great job diving in deeper into the material and studying history, geography, and touching on current times as well.
Highly recommend this class and professor!

This class was very engaging and the professor took into account the pandemic. There were weekly quizzes based on the lectures (and occasionally one of the readings) but they were easy if you had taken notes on the lecture. Because of the pandemic, there was no midterm nor final. We had three short essays due by the end of the term. The instructions for these essays were vague because they said they wanted reflection papers but they actually wanted rhetorical analysis. There was also a "instagram style" slide show that required you do listen to a podcast or attend a seminar based on the class material but it was easy. The final project was very open-ended and leniently graded.

Writing this years later but I remember the class being ridiculously easy but also pretty boring - at least to me. It's good for people interested in film or Russian history, because the professor is also not the most engaging lecturer. So unless you're really interested in the subject matter you may get bored, but if you're looking for an easy GE . . . this is it.