I'd like to preface my review by urging everybody to take the other student's reviews of Dr. Trojan with a grain of salt.
Dr. Trojan is an extremely knowledgeable professor who goes out of his way to both help and challenge his students to do well and learn something new. These intentional challenges come in the form of identifying students' preconceived notions of text and concepts that most don't even realize they carry with them. Dr. Trojan has a very lively, happy, upbeat personality that carries with it a contagious aura of happiness and an excitement for attending class. Dr. T takes a more modern approach to lecture and allows for constant student engagement, discussion, and questions throughout lecture while he guides conversation in various directions, typically on the basis of the required readings. This method is effective for identifying key concepts and ideas that many students often miss or have a tough time understanding. Some students have pointed out his lecture style is terrible, but I'd rebuttal by stating that they more than likely are not attending lecture and are not engaging with the text/lecture itself. The workload of this class is quite heavy with a huge emphasis being placed on multiple weekly readings, which are provided free of charge, as well as annotations for the text being required. The majority of students' grades rely on two papers throughout the course and a large 10-15 page final paper. Participation is greatly encouraged, helpful, and will provide a better experience and platform for learning. Overall, the workload is tough, but if you manage your time well and put in the time and effort, you'll do well. Dr. Trojan is a great professor with so much to teach and give. It is obvious he loves his job and truly cares about his students' learning and doing well. I strongly encourage any poli sci student willing to stick through the heavy workload to give Dr. T a try at least once to experience something new and exciting with an extremely unique and likable individual.

I just want to preface this by saying that to be quite honest, I am usually the type of student that does the bare minimum to get an A and does everything last minute.

Dr. Trojan is a great professor. There are definitely ways to finesse not doing all of the readings for this class, but his lectures really made me think deeply and question and strengthen my own political beliefs by the end(which really took me by surprise, as I am not someone who tends to be that interested in American Politics). He does go on weird weird little tangents but honestly in the most charming way. He facilitates great discussions, and if you make yourself go to the unrequired live lectures the first few weeks, you'll find yourself wanting to go and participate. Take this class. It'll make you think.

General Comments
There are a lot of reading each week, but you are supposed to skim them instead of reading them in depth. You also need to keep track of the assignment deadlines as there are several due each week.
Here is the class breakdown from when I took it:
Perusall Annotations (15%)
You need to write seven annotations on each reading on Perusall. You don't really need to think about writing them, but they each have to be spaced out through the reading and a certain length. These are due at every class meeting.
Interventions (20%)
There are two of them. They are basically mini essays. Aim for about four or five pages. He wants you to write a persuasive argument about the text by analyzing its contradictions.
Commonplace Book (10%)
There are ten of these. You have to draw a picture for the readings of the week.
Peer Review (10%)
This is a short essay about someone else's paper. He gives a template for it and should be about one to two pages long.
Term Paper (45%)
This is worth almost the entirely of the grade. I got an A on almost every assignment throughout the quarter and received a B+ because of a low grade on the term paper. I recommend going to office hours to make sure your argument conforms to his standards. For secondary sources, make sure to bring down people that disagree with your claim in order for you strengthen your argument based on them. While length matters, it is not at all sufficient to get a good grade. Aim for about 13-15 pages.
Final thoughts:
I was shocked by my final grade in the class. I thought that I was doing well throughout the quarter, but my grade ended up plummeting due to term paper at the end.

Quizzes (30%)
Generally 4-point quizzes with two questions each throughout the quarter. I highly recommend doing the readings to be prepared for the quizzes because he will sometimes ask obscure details. However, he's very helpful by posting study guides for the readings that we will likely be quizzed on. If you want to do well on the quizzes, do all the study guides and you should be good. The quizzes also, sometimes, included questions from lecture. So definitely keep track of those. He's also very generous and drops your lowest quiz score.

Close Reading (10%)
He asked us to choose a quote or section from the text to analyze. It was a simple assignment and I think everyone got a 100 on it. It was only a 1-page paper.

Peer Review (10%)
When preparing your term paper, you will have it reviewed by one of your classmates. It was a simple one-page assignment.

Term Paper (50%)
According to the syllabus, a good paper is usually about 10-15 pages. I strongly recommend hitting that number of pages. Also, definitely talk to him during office hours for your paper. He was very kind and helped me outline my paper. My paper essentially contained three sections that each evaluated one of the author's arguments, a counterargument, and a summary that includes additional readings he recommends (but doesn't require for the class). He was super helpful during office hours and gave me an A for the paper.

Overall:
I really enjoyed the class. It was very engaging and he constantly encouraged debate. I would pay attention during his classes because he often presents opposing arguments/interpretations about the readings that you could use as inspiration for your term paper. Unfortunately, he doesn't record his lectures, so I strongly recommend going to them to succeed on your term paper. Overall, great class, great professor, and would definitely take again.

So this review is for 114B but I don't see an option to do that class. Regardless, I've talked to people who have taken 114A and it's literally the same class (same structure, grading scheme, etc.) with the only difference being the books you read.
tbh I was seriously considering dropping this class... I'm not a pol sci or humanities major, and I don't like reading so the reading was pretty overwhelming and people were telling me he grades the quizzes and essay hard. You have to read at least a full book every week, sometimes even two, which I was totally not used to. I'm so glad I stuck w/ it tho cuz it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be, and I needed this class for a GE requirement right before I was about to graduate.
So someone here already posted the grading breakdown. For starters, the close reading assignment is very easy. You literally just take a passage from any book and produce a 1-2 page analyzation. He essentially gave everyone full credit for this assignment.
Now the quizzes are a bulk of your grade, and I would fully recommend coming to class because he gives you at least half the answers in lecture. And this is important b/c sometimes the texts aren't obvious and require a certain interpretation, so it's nice for him to give you those interpretations in lecture. I went to practically every class, and while I merely skimmed thru all the books (except for the one I did my essay on), I still got a 100 on all the quizzes because of the lecture and study guides. All I would do is the day before class, I would use the study guides as a reference and skim thru chapters until I found a passage related to the study guide questions. Then I would memorize all of these. The quizzes are only two questions at most, but they're short essay style. After the first quiz or two, I kinda had a grasp of what types of questions he likes to ask. There wasn't a single question on the quizzes that wasn't on the study guide, so make sure you use it as a reference. Sometimes there are lots of questions on the study guide, but usually he picks the questions that cover the overarching topics of the book. And like I said, they're always gonna be short essay style so focus on the ones that cover big concepts rather than just small facts. If you do this you can easily get a good grade on the quizzes. Also, he drops one quiz so you get one freebee.
Now for the peer review, I felt like he graded it harder than the close reading. Everyone I talked to got full credit on the close reading, but I came across a good # of students who didn't get full credit on the peer review. Although it's only worth 10%, it's important that you maximize your points on everything up until the essay because the essay is worth half of your grade and he's known to be a relatively tough grader. So make sure you actually spend time on the peer review and analyze your peer's essay to a deep level.
Now the big boy- the essay. I spent a lot of time on this, and it showed cuz I got a pretty good grade on it. MAKE SURE you get your argument checked out by him before you work on it. He has OH after every class and he is very good with making sure he spends time w/ everybody. Once it gets to week 9, it's gonna get crammed w/ literally everybody there so you may wanna get it checked out before then. It's absolutely imperative that you get his okay on the argument b/c it's the biggest portion of your paper. And it may be sort of confusing on what he expects, I know I was confused and overwhelmed in the beginning, cuz basically he wants you to make sort of a controversial interpretation of the reading, and then spend 10-15 pages proving that interpretation. You wanna go to OH and get his verification cuz he'll give you tips, and if you know your argument is good, that's almost half the battle right there. Also he doesn't like emailing about specific questions about the essay b/c he reserves a lot of time in OH for that (which is understandable), so you wanna make sure you use OH to your advantage... don't expect to just be able to email him about it like you may have done for other classes
Overall, this was a good class and I learned a lot from it. I would take it w/ him if you're a pol sci major and this is a major requirement, but if you're someone like me who just needed a GE req it may be better for you to go w/ an easier class. This class was far from an easy A and required a lot of work, but Trojan is a great, helpful professor

Before taking his PS 114A class, I was a little nervous after seeing some negative reviews about him on BruinWalk, but he's actually an outstanding professor. I came away from this class with a lot of knowledge, and Professor Trojan really helped facilitate that. The workload can be pretty heavy depending on the week, so make sure you set aside some extra time for this class to get the work done. The final is a term paper, and he's great about helping students come up with topics and write great papers. Overall, this class is really rewarding, and I would definitely recommend this class to anyone who wants to learn more about early American authors.

A horrible class definitely do not recommend taking! He just strays from the subjects and then the time flies by and its just frustrating plus he is a hard grader and does not allow tardy work

The best professor I have ever had in my three years at UCLA. Very knowledgeable with the subject, is very helpful in mastering the coursework, flexible and understanding, adds humor to the class, workload is perfect and assigned weekly, not overwhelming and reinforces the knowledge being learned that given week. Overall a great professor, would recommend to anyone looking for an awesome class/professor to have.

Dr. Trojan is one of the best professors I have ever had. Every class, he brings the texts to life, and you can really tell how passionate he is about political theory, literature, and political science in general. He's also extremely helpful and cares a lot about his students' success and understanding. If you enjoy political theory, you will enjoy taking a class by him!

He just rambles on for ages and then doesn't actually explain anything relevant. He's a great guy but just isn't all there, so I changed to P/NP in the week 9, because term paper is 50% of grade!!!!