DO NOT TAKE THIS COURSE UNLESS YOU ARE SKILLED AT WRITING AND YOU ARE LUCKY ENOUGH TO HAVE A GOOD TA. Lectures and assignments are totally unrelated. Your grades are entirely based on your TA. My TA, Rebecca Glassberg, is totally a piece of shit. You have no idea about her standard. Even you have written tens of versions and met her several times she would still give a shit score and say "this is a solid work" when meeting. Reading materials were fun, but this won't change my view on this course as a shit. If you want to take it, cross your finger that you will have a good TA and avoid to get in Glassberg's class. You will die without knowing the reason.

TLDR: One of the best + easiest classes at UCLA. Take Steve Cucharo as TA.
Breakdown:
20%: Response Papers
25%: Participation
25%: Final
30%: Social Science Paper

The class is new thus workload and grading is light, hardly 2-3h of work per week.

Response Papers: simple 400 word papers commenting on specific interesting lines or paragraphs from the readings (stuff you find interesting, confusing, or just disagree with - anything). Super easy to get full (specially with Steve)

Participation: show up to discussion, talk for a few minutes and you'll get full on this (at least with Steve Cucharo)

Final: Keyword definitions (30pts) and 2 essays (35 pts each). Probably the only challenging bit of the class, but needs max 1 week of work for an A.

Social Science Paper: 5pg paper with EXTREMELY CLEAR guidelines on the format, structure, content etc. Easy to get an A on this too. I worked on it for a week and got a 93%

Super straight forward class, easy A, AND covers 4 GEs + Writing 2 + Diversity.
PS: Steve Cucharo is a fucking godsend. Amazing man, wants you to do well, extremely helpful throughout, and a fucking gem.

Text me on 4244409516, giving away notes and study guides, more than enough to get you an A on the class.

Please do not take this class if you are thinking of taking a cluster. I walked into this class thinking it was easy and light as stated by previous bruinwalk reviews but it is an actual pain in the ass. They keep changing the syllabus but the case studies we did for fall 2021 were: Holocaust, French colonialism and the Armenian genocide and the Armenian case study is the most difficult one to comprehend. During the first quarter, you write a response paper each week for 4 weeks based on readings you've been assigned, then you work on a visual studies paper which is a 6-7 page paper (not the easiest thing to write just btw) and then on top of that you have 2 final essays that are supposed to be 3-4 pages each. They don't think before they assign the readings, there were weeks where we were assigned over 100 pages of reading and some weeks where we'd have to watch 2 hour-long documentaries along with reading the material assigned for the week. This material was not only disturbing to read but also so so so hard to understand because most of it was aimed towards an expert audience and ofc I am nowhere near an expert. And oh, don't even think about missing a discussion section because you get participation points by attending AND being active and if you don't, they dock a few points off your participation grade total. The grading is the worst part, I still don't understand how they grade, each TA has different requirements and grading patterns. If you can, take Steve, Bradley or Yair. I had Yair first quarter, loved him but I hate my current TA. She gave me an 88 on my first paper this quarter but her comments were "really strong analysis, great job". I hate this class with a burning passion pls don't take it if your writing skills arent the best. take some cluster like the interracial dynamics or biotech and save yourself from this misery

The reviews prior to fall 2021 are very deceiving. This was BY FAR my least favorite class this quarter. In fact I hated it. Everyone said this cluster was lightwork/easy but this was not the case for me at all. There was a ton of work in the form of weekly readings, although theoretically you could skip them and BS your section participation (I am not good at doing this so this wasn't an option for me). Also, Sharon (my TA, who is new this year) graded my essays pretty hard and her suggestions to improve them were not helpful. I would seriously spend so much time on my response papers and would still not get an improving grade. Her discussions were hell--almost 2 hours every Wednesday of boring group activities and awkward silence. She was also a slow grader. We were supposed to receive grades for our visual studies paper a few days before our final was due, but I never even received mine at all lmao (I only saw my final overall grade of A-).

The bad parts of this class had all to do with my TA and discussion section. The lectures themselves were pretty interesting for the most part. I was especially engaged in Rothberg's lectures on the Holocaust. Nevertheless, the bad parts far outweighed the good.

I think your experience in this class is entirely dependent on which TA you have. Take someone like Cucharo if you can as I have heard great things about him.

The class itself was my favorite one this quarter. For this year, we studied the Indonesian Mass Killings (Prof. Robinson), the Armenian Genocide (Prof. Sengel), and the Holocaust (Prof. McBride and Rothberg). I had Alexis Coopersmith as my TA. The grade breakdown was section participation (20%), active reading-Perusall (10%), 4 response papers (20%), history paper (25%), and final essays (25%).

My favorite lecturer was Prof. Robinson. I think his were very succinct and engaging. Additionally, the readings for his portion were mostly from the book he wrote, and he labels each section clearly ie "who were the victims" "the army's role", etc. It was so helpful when writing the history paper and final essays. The Armenian Genocide was harder to comprehend for me. The readings, especially the Suny and Bloxham ones, were just huge chunks of text. I ended up spending two days re-watched all the lectures (on 2x speed) and in hindsight, reviewing after everything helped to filter out the extra information included.

This year's history paper was focused on the Indonesian Mass Killings and the US's role. There was more than enough guidance on this. With the final essays as well, the profs released a study guide with possible prompts. In our last section, we were able to brainstorm relevant info to conclude.

Alexis was an awesome TA. For response papers, you could run your topic and structure with her at her office hour. The only con would be that she tend to release grades late. We were suppose to receive feedback from our history paper before we submitted our final essays, but she didn't release them until a few days after. She also grades pretty well; I think she went pretty easy on the history paper and final essays.

This was a very difficult class involving lengthy papers, long difficult novels to read, and confusing lectures that were not helpful for the tests. I wish I would have taken another class instead of this one.

Cluster 48 was by FAR my favorite course I've taken this year. The subject is incredibly interesting, the professors are incredibly knowledgeable about their particular case, and do a very good job at incorporating humor and personality into their lectures. Although keeping up with the readings can be tough, it is very doable. Additionally all the TAs were extremely kind and helpful. I heavily recommend taking this cluster ; )

This was a great class! I absolutely love all of the professors and they are so knowledgable and helpful. I would really recommend this class to any 1st year student, because I've been able to get to know professors and other students due to the fact the course runs the whole year. ALSO: STEVE CUCHARO IS A GOD AMONGST MEN!!!

All the professors that teach this class are very engaging and very passionate about all their subjects. You can really see that they put in a lot of effort to make this a great class and is very organized in its structure. it's overall a very fun and engaging class especially since the topic is unique as a subject. There are a lot of opportunities to do well in this class because they are very clear with their directions in writing the paper and the final. I got an A- because I was late to section quite often so attendance and participation does matter otherwise this class is very easy. Winter quarter they also give extra credit if you attend event. Questions are also welcomed every lecture and the professors love answering questions plus it's in De Neve. Amazin

All the professors for this Cluster are extreme experts on their topics. If you're into history and analysis of genocides you'll be very interested. I'm not really into that stuff but they were able to draw me in. Easy cluster to take but it depends on your TA bc they're the ones grading your papers. You have long readings each week and two optional lectures. I didn't do the readings, nor go to lectures and still managed to write A worthy essays. You have like 2 essays a quarter and then one as your final exam. The discussion groups talk about the weekly readings but if you get the gist of the three case studies it's easy to bs your participation. My TA was the best teacher I have ever had, Bradley Cordozo. He is super fun, humorous, and understanding for extensions and stuff like that. He is also so helpful and always available for appointments. He is one of the main reasons I recommend this course. The first two quarters are the same in structure but the third is apparently a seminar style class, which could be easier or harder, we'll see.