Professor Segura is wonderful! He is super engaging and nice, but there is a lot of required readings (and the readings are often older philosophical or political dialogues so they can be difficult to get through). However, if you balance your work load and participate a lot in discussion you will do great. I also had an amazing TA (shoutout Ryan Dougherty - he is phenomenal and super helpful). I highly encourage students to take this class.

Professor Segura was a super engaging lecturer and was inviting and friendly in office hours. I can't say enough good things about his class. His lectures were recorded, and the assigned class times were used for required Q&A and optional office hours, where he went deeper into or clarified the material where there was student interest. I also really appreciated that instead of the lectures covering just the key points of the required texts, Professor Segura gave important context and presented more material. The one place where he could have improved is giving context about some of the more difficult texts earlier, so do ask about that in the Q&As if he doesn't mention it. I didn't find the actual discussions particularly valuable, but the overviews of the material my TA gave were absolutely key in helping me understand and get through some of the difficult texts.

PA 50 should be named "Introduction to Democratic and Social Theory." The first half of the class was about theories of democracy, politics, justice, and the second half was about race, gender, and class and how they intersect with democracy. It was a super interesting and foundational class in social sciences that definitely should be GE. I highly recommend taking Professor Segura's class. You'll learn a lot, and I promise you that the moderate workload is worth the effort!

TLDR: This class is overall somewhat easy and engaging, with a light workload. Your TA determines your final grade so participate and go to their office hours. 2/3 of your grade is essay based so if you are a good writer then it should be easier to get an A. If you aren't a good writer, getting an A is definitely doable if you really grind the midterm and final essay.

The first half of the course is more theory based and more boring to me, the lectures are about democracy, the constitution, etc. The second half of the class is more interesting, with lectures focusing on racism, sexism, classism, and the intersections between them. I took this class completely in person, but Segura posted the slides as well as the recording of lectures on Bruincast and the recorded lectures from last year when it was online. There is no participation or tests in lecture needed so you could miss any lecture and not be negatively affected. There is no textbook, just weekly readings posted so no out of pocket costs.

Discussion is worth 34% of your grade and is basically mandatory to be there (unless you contact your TA). In my discussion, the weekly homework was to post one paragraph review of the class readings to a discussion post . You also had to sign up to lead one discussion with 2 other students. This was a 15-20 minute group presentation with slides about the readings of the week. It wasn't too much work (1-2 hour preparation max). You also had to talk and participate in discussion weekly to get points. I got a 100% in discussion and the mean and median were a 96%, so pretty easy to do well in that. The midterm and final essay were worth 33% each. Both essays were a 5-7 page research paper based on class readings and outside sources. The TA's also grade those essays but you can ask them for help in office hours. You only get 5 days to write the essay once the prompts are released so it is a little annoying that the midterm and final could fall on a busy weekend. There are no other tests, quizzes, or essays, so the workload is relatively easy even though there are a lot of readings.

Dean Segura is an amazing lecturer, easy to see why he has the position and acclaim that he does. Even though lecture attendance isn't super important for your grade, I looked forward to going to lecture because he is so engaging and he talks about issues in such an enlightening way. The papers were interesting and kind of fun to write though make sure to know EXACTLY what your TA is looking for before starting them. Also, the readings are good to skim but not crucially important as long as you can persuasively integrate them into the papers.

Take this class!!! Professor Segura is an incredible lecturer and this class is such a great opportunity to learn from the dean of the Public Affairs department. The lectures were always engaging and interesting and assignments were relevant and thought-provoking. I would recommend this course to anyone interested in politics or history!