As the department chair, Professor Pestana is definitely an expert in both the content for this course and history in general. What's more important is that she masters the teaching skill to make her lectures compact, effective and engaging in a short time frame. Her lectures incorporate lots of interesting details and unique perspectives on some familiar historical events and Professor Pestana usually organizes the lectures coherently, constantly linking facts, events and significance and connecting different periods included in this course. She posts slides for every lecture onto CCLE and encouraged us to take effective notes instead of writing everything she talks about down; I do found that the notes I take and the slides become excellent complement to each other (Especially as the slides provide an outline to follow the notes and can sometimes remind me what's omitted in my notes). For those with no US History background in high school, the optional textbook could be a good resource to refer to, but again it is purely optional. As a student with no high school US History background, I didn't use the textbook and I think doing the weekly readings (both lecture readings and discussion readings) thoroughly could be enough (and the readings, both first-hand and second-hand ones, are the only resources we can use for essays; no outside research needed and allowed). The grading consists of a paper due week 3, an in-class mid-term ( ID questions and an essay), a take-home final paper, and 20% participation. For the mid-term, a large amount of questions are given and the real exam questions are all selected from this range; I personally like this method as I got more control over my performance on the exam and it really consolidated my knowledge and enriched my perspectives for this period of history. The final paper includes some interesting essay options that requires us to think holistically (especially think throughout the whole period) and critically on certain events or historical views. All the papers in this course are short and managable if you know what's going on, and they really helped me to practice on how to write more concisely. Attendance was not taken for lectures, but participation in lectures is cardinal to a decent performance in this course. Attendance and Participation in discussions will be graded, and the participation mark are never hard to get. My TA, Christian, made us to post questions and thoughts on discussion readings weekly, and this will be a good way to earn the participation grade if you are not so willing to speak in sections. Christian was also a extremely nice TA; He was clearly enthusiastic about history, and he posted his discussion slides onto CCLE which were also very useful. He gave really thorough and effective feedback for papers, and his office hours are also really helpful. The only thing I might complain about this course is that it was an 8 a.m (don't know whether it's the case every time); however, it was definitely worthy to get up early for the lectures and the course overall.

Pestana is a good professor who is clearly very knowledgeable about history in general. Her lectures tend to stray a little bit from what's taught in section. The midterms and Finals are essays and she absolutely loves it if you explain yourself as clearly as possible. Seriously just dumb everything down so that a middle schooler could easily understand it and you'll be fine in the class.

Professor Pestana was engaging, knowledgable, and interesting. The class had very little work and the papers that were assigned in week 4 and week 10 were short. The TAs and Professor Pestana all worked to help students succeed and were always open, actively engage students by asking and answering questions in section and some lectures. As a non-history major, this is a great GE and I would highly recommend it whether or not you have a strong American history background.

This class is a pleasant way to start the day. Professor Pestana is laid back about attendance ("you're all adults here") but does not tolerate any use of electronics (she will pause mid-lecture until all phones are put away). There are two papers and a midterm essay exam but are all graded quite loosely. Participation in section is important, and Professor Pestana will sometimes come to section. Students with prior U.S. history experience in high school definitely have an advantage, but Professor Pestana's lectures cater to those with non-U.S. educational backgrounds. I would recommend keeping up with all the readings throughout the quarter, because you will need to cite from them in the final paper.