Panagia is a great dude. He’s very knowledgeable about the subject and is honestly a king. His lectures are kinda hard to follow, at least through zoom. I got used to it a couple weeks in, but he does say “um” a lot. Otherwise, they’re really valuable lectures and I recommend attending all of them. The readings are sometimes long and convoluted but can be skimmed, or cleared up easily by looking up summaries or videos. The 3 assignments (essays or podcasts, whichever you choose) were actually really fun, and aren’t hard depending on who your TA is and how much they’re willing to help. Naomi is an AMAZING TA; if you can, you should definitely be in her section. Overall, I LOVED this class and felt like I learned so much! Very relevant. Would absolutely recommend it for a GE & poli sci major req.

Panagia is an absolutely amazing professor, I'd very highly recommend him! He's crazy smart and is able to make the very confusing political theory digestible to a new student. At first, this class was very overwhelming, but after time you get the flow of the course and his lecture style. To do well in this class, I'd recommend going to lecture and section and to have someone (a friend or TA) that you can bounce ideas off of. The course content is hard, but if you go to Panagia's lecture and your discussion, you'll do more than fine. Panagia and the TAs are incredibly supportive during COVID/virtual learning. Make an effort and you'll do well in this class. If you can, get Naomi as your TA. She was an absolute gem and I'd recommend her to anyone.

This class was extremely boring, but if you go to lecture and have a good TA it is very manageable. I never did any of the readings and received an A on every paper. The class is basically graded on the three papers and they are very confusing and are given without much direction, so you really have to listen to what your TA wants. There are no finals and no exams, so your performance on these papers really matters.

Hands down one of the best professors I've ever had. The coursework was very straight forward, there were only 3 essays (which could be submitted as podcasts or "tedtalks"), and weekly submission of one page of notes from the assigned readings. He provided all the readings, so there wasn't the need to buy anything. The content can get very confusing because you talk about philosophy and theory, but Panagia is such a smart dude and he's such a good lecturer. Overall, really good class even though I got confused at times. Vanessa is also the coolest T.A. so I highly recommend it.

I took this class online due to Covid and it was a pretty interesting class. I didn't go to a lot of the lectures and still managed to do pretty well. I would say the discussions and that talking to your TA is more important. The material is genuinely interesting if you are into theory, philosophy, and politics!

I took this class a prerequisite for my major and was actually pleasantly surprised. Much of what my learn in this class, as it is Political Theory, is about different theorists and philosophers and how politics has been influenced. The readings each week were about 40 pages long but they weren't too bad so long as you didn't leave them to the last minute. The readings were sometimes difficult to understand (not impossible!) but lectures were often very helpful in clarification and explanations. Professor Panagia clearly knows what he is talking about and provided real world examples to help. He also happened to throw in a few jokes throughout classes which is always good. The lectures were posted on Bruincast so just incase you didn't make it, you could always go through them later. As far as grading, there were 3 essays or Ten-Talks to do, each worth 20% of your grade. 20% of your grade also came from turning in a weekly page of annotations and notes and another 20% came from discussions. I'm not sure how other discussions worked in other classes but for mine I didn't have to participate unless I felt as though I wanted to (although we did have to post on a discussion board and still show up!). These essays are a large portion of your grade so you definitely want to get them done and do so to the best of your ability. If your TA gives office hours, go to them and ask questions! The topics of the assignments can sometimes be a little open ended so make sure you understand what you intend to do. If you have the chance to, get Vanessa as your TA! She was always helpful and clarified the different ideas that we learned about, overall helping with our understanding. She was also willing to help go over our thesis/arguments in office hours and provided great feedback which helped with the essays. Overall, this class is not too bad and I actually found the subject rather interesting so take it if it sounds like something you'd like!

Overall good class. Lectures can be confusing sometimes or feel like he’s talking about nothing for an hour and a half. Weekly readings aren’t too bad and you only need to submit a page of annotations and a page of notes. Your grade basically comes down to 3 essays that are pretty short with creative prompts.

As a freshman in college it took me a bit to realize that professors just lecture. Your grades are actually in the hands of your TA. So ideally, you want to get the easiest grading TA possible which is hard because they change so frequently each quarter and is really just luck of the draw. Sure, you can participate in lectures and stay after class to chat with him/her, but the reality is that the TA's read your assignments and essays, they take attendance for mandatory discussion groups, they manage office hours, and they manage your grades. Some of my friends got really easy TAs that graded them high A's throughout everything. And then there was me, who never missed a discussion group, participated minimum twice per every discussion group, went to 1 on 1 office hours AND group office hours and scraped by with B's on my assignments. My TA was tough. The class has no exams or quizzes. Your entire grade depends on homework assignments (which is a guaranteed 100% and graded on completion) and three Ten-Talks - the professor gives you three topics throughout the quarter and you write about it, make a podcast about it, or a video. I want to say this class is hard, but its not. If you get the wrong TA, the class is hard for no reason.

Professor Panagia is the BEST LECTURER EVER!!! I left his class mesmerized and amazed, he is very engaging and explains everything very well. The readings are dense and difficult but he explains everything wonderfully in class. I left his class hungry for more and always loved the way he describes the political theory in our readings. As for the grading, it comes from an annotated reading page and one page of notes per week, so you don't really need to complete read everything, especially the more challenging weeks (like Augustine and Hobbes). Participation is just speaking up during the discussions, my TA was Nicholas Muench and he was amazing, highly recommend him. The majority of your grade is three essays worth 20% of your final grade each. Here, it is helpful to do the readings so that you can directly quote the texts - definitely communicate with your TAs about the essays and see what they expect. Nick was also really helpful in explaining the material. There was one week where I had a family emergency and simply asked for a 3-day extension on the second essay, and it was granted no questions asked. Both the TA and Panagia are highly available for students, would definitely take this class again!

I didn't really like this class but maybe that's because I find political theory really boring. Lots of discussions of Plato, Aristotle, etc. and we had three "TEN-Talks" that were each worth 20% of our grade, and my TA usually gave me high B's/low A's on them. You could choose to do an essay or a podcast, but sometimes the concepts were difficult and the podcasts always took me so long to complete. Besides that, I don't think there was any other work besides a discussion post each week. No tests.