Professor Yan is a good professor. He speaks very slowly so his speaking is very clear. However, lectures can feel long and boring because of this especially for someone like me who is not super interested in this subject. The readings were sometimes long and uninteresting to me but they were manageable. Towards the end of the quarter I stopped reading all of them because well they were long and I was lazy. I recommend you read most of them so you can have something to talk about in discussion. Otherwise you will have a very boring and awkward time in zoom discussion meetings. Also, Professor Yan did not make us purchase a textbook which I always appreciate. The midterms and final were straightforward and there was a lot of information to pull from in the readings. There is a one page writing assignment every week and you are required to attend discussion for participation points. It's a slow paced class and an easy GE that does give you an appreciation for anthropology.

I would recommend taking this class. It's definitely an easy GE and the professor is efficient and clear. I enjoyed the discussions, and to get credit you just need to talk around 1-2 times. Weekly written 1-page reflections were required but those were double-spaced and really easy.

I would recommend taking this class. It's a relatively easy GE and the professor is efficient and pretty clear. Weekly written 1-page reflections were required but those were double-spaced and super easy. I put in a mid amount of effort and ended up with an A-.

This was a very interesting class and I'm glad I took it. Yan was very friendly and tried give us a good general background in anthropology. The lectures could get boring sometimes, but if you actually paid attention to what he was saying and tried to think critically about the concepts, you could get a lot from it. There were a few readings a week which were pretty interesting, and the exams were just short answer questions, which drew from concepts covered in the lectures and the readings and asked for examples. I imagine it might be harder in person, but because I took it online, we were allowed access to the readings, notes, and recorded lectures to reference in our responses, so it wasn't hard at all. Also we had 24 hours.
Overall, very interesting class with a very nice professor. Yan also has a very interesting background growing up as a farmer in China and fleeing the Communist Revolution, which he sometimes talks about and relates concepts to. I would recommend this class, especially to anyone interested in Anthropology (but I would recommend anthro 4 more if you're trying to choose between them, as I found anthro 4 more interesting and exciting).

Super easy class, I completely recommend to anyone who is considering it, especially with Yan. I never took great notes because he uploaded all the slides to CCLE so it didn't really matter. Sweet man, hard to understand at times but very passionate about the topics at hand. The weekly reflections were extremely easy and basically graded on just submitting it. All you need to do is show up to discussions and study using the slides for a day or so for the midterm and final and you'll be golden.

Exams and participation in discussion rely on you being able to draw main ideas from lectures and readings and being able to explain them or discuss how lecture ideas and readings relate to each other. If you can do that, then you'll have no problem with this class.

-Very easy class
-The exams require examples/evidence from reading, so at the very least skim them so you know what topics are covered when you need to cite them in exam
-our exam was open notes, 24 hours (Covid)
-readings are a bit long but its not too bad

Overall an easy class. Every week, you had to turn in a response dealing with one thing we found interesting on the lectures of the week and one thing from the readings of the week. Midterm and finals were each 3 short essay questions that you have 24 hours to complete (but that won't be the case once we return to in-person classes). Lectures are often dull and readings are quite dense. But getting an A is not a problem.

Yan is an adorable old professor, but he does have an accent that may hinder his clarity in lecture. In lecture, he goes through slides very, very slowly, so he's not really that engaging. That being said, if you pay at least 80% attention and take note of the ethnographic examples he gives, you can definitely do well in this class. The midterm and final were both very straightforward: 3-4 short essay questions on some themes touched on in class. The readings are pretty crucial in providing context and examples of the concepts in lecture, and are actually really interesting sometimes. I recommend reading them just so your discussion sections can be more than 50 minutes of Zoom silence. However, be prepared for about 20-30 pages of reading per week. Overall, this class was super easy and interesting. I highly recommend it for anyone who is even mildly interested in cultural institutions and society's evolution.

Super interesting class. Midterm was straightforward and really focused on main elements of anthropology. It was a bit harder to condense all information on one page for each final question, but whatever ig. Prof. Yan is a super sweet adorable guy and honestly the class was a good idea for someone who needs a GE. Nikhit was a good TA and really fair plus discussions were really engaging. Glad I took this class.