Taking musical theatre history with Professor Gorshein is much like attending a musical: you feel as if you are transported into a whole different realm filled with delightful songs and dance, educational history, and valuable lessons. During every lecture, I found myself travelling back in history to witness the first show boat or on stage singing alongside Dorothy from The Wiz! or dancing with anxious auditionees from The Chorus Line and returning from my adventure with Hamilton stuck in my head -- completely forgetting how I was actually stuck in a miserable little dorm room in the middle of an awful pandemic.

The course covers a variety of musical theatre-related topics and shows in a diverse set of historical contexts. I was absolutely astounded by how much history and interesting information was examined in such a brief 6 weeks! The weekly quizzes are fair and help reinforce both lecture material and assigned readings, which are provided on the course website and neatly organised by week. I really enjoyed the weekly discussion forum posts, where I had the opportunity to both become enlightened by my fellow classmates' diverse perspectives and share a bit of my own insights. Even if you aren't a theatre major or minor, consider taking this course; plenty of my classmates came from south campus and had just as many eye-opening contributions as my fellow performers!

Professor Gorshein truly brings to life such wonderfully intriguing material in the most engaging and effective way. I would certainly recommend this course to anyone who has a passion for history, the performing arts, learning - or all the above!

Overall an interesting and well put together class. Not stressful, just enjoyable. Would recommend