Prof Pierre gives amazing lectures and her TA was pretty decent. The only A+ I've gotten at UCLA

i really enjoyed this class and professor! appreciated that she offered it online because it worked super well with my schedule but I still feel like i got a ton out of it!! learned a lot more than anticipated.

Amazing class, if you need to knock off a GE this is a go-to. The class is at your pace and all assignments are easy as long as you pay attention to the lectures. You will have a blast while educating yourself on important issues!!

This class is so great! You learn about very important issues and Dr. Pierre is a great lecturer. The books we read for this class are very interesting, and the readings and lectures are too. Dr. Pierre brings in amazing guest lecturers and I really like that. You can tell she's very smart and passionate and that's great to be around (it was an online class, but I still like her energy).

There are not that many assignments week-to-week, but I say the midterm and final exam are time consuming.

I had Joelle Julien as my T.A. and she was great too!

Overall, great class, great professor, and I would take it again.

This class is the easiest of Ws. You learn quite a lot of important concepts as well; I would even suggest that this class be mandatory for students here, since it is so crucial to understanding American social struggles, and everyone can take away something important from this course. Highly recommend this course for anyone who wants an easy GE, while also wanting to learn a bit too. 10/10

Professor Pierre is no doubt an extremely knowledgeable and helpful professor who loves what she does and has much to offer. She is kind, accepting, and accommodating in every way. The workload is fairly reasonable with weekly readings (student purchased) followed by weekly reflection papers and three exams. With that being said, the structure of this class did not work well with me. This class should be considered two separate classes with how it is broken up and structured. There is lecture and discussion that both seem to encompass two completely different concepts, ideas, and set of materials. In discussion, students are expected to read multiple books and write weekly reflections on them. These discussions, which are heavily student driven, consist of students talking about the key points and ideas of the books. Conversely, when attending lecture, often the readings are not even discussed, brought up, or relevant to the lecture itself. These lectures also consist of Professor Pierre almost entirely reading slideshows verbatim. Personally, I feel attending lecture is useless when a professor takes an hour and a half to read a slideshow that is available online that I could read in 15 minutes on my own. Furthermore, she talks extremely fast and often stumbles over her words making it sometimes difficult to follow what she is saying or where she is going with her thoughts. Again though, this is counterbalanced by a very heavy reliance on slideshows but is also bolstered by her frequent asking of student questions with further explanations if necessary. Overall, Professor Pierre is a wonderful professor who no doubt has a passion for what she does, but personally, the style of her teaching doesn't work well with me.

This class has been one of the most interesting classes I've taken at UCLA. This was my first Black Studies class and just when you think you are educated on topics like racism and Black History, this class shows how we don't really know much about African American studies, but the surface of it. For this class, you do have to read articles, but I didn't mind reading them because they were so intriguing. My TA was awesome as well and you can tell that everyone is so passionate on this topic and I have never seen a more passionate professor than Pierre and the other professors that helped her teach this topic. I would take this class again, it isn't much work. You watch the lectures, you have two discussion posts each week and one discussion post in the week of your midterm and final. If you watch the lectures and do the reading and take detailed notes, you are good to go for the midterm and final. Got a perfect score on my discussion post, midterm, and final!

difficult class in that the readings were super dense. the class was structured around three ethnographic novels that were difficult to understand, very dense, like graduate level stuff tbh (this was my perspective as a non-anthro major). but you can get by if you understand the basic concepts from section and ask questions. the lectures are AMAZING though, professor Pierre takes a very liberal stance when it comes to capitalism and I loved learning from her. I learned so much about US imperialism, indigenous struggles against settler colonialism, and neoliberalism in the West African context.

This class is an easy GE, but it is a little tedious in regards to the readings/ lectures we had every week. It was interesting in the beginning, but I felt so disconnected halfway through the quarter because it felt as if I was watching/ reading the material simply to get it done and I did not gain much from it. This class is essentially self-paced, so I eventually stopped reading the material and only really watched the lectures. I only read the material when required for the discussion forums that we had + midterms/ finals.

Your grade is made up of weekly discussion forums, one paper, midterms, and finals. Your midterms and finals are simply short answer + long answer questions to the material that you should have read/ watched within the previous weeks. So pretty easy!

The only complaint I have about this class is that it is literally impossible to reach the TAs + professor of this class. I am 99% sure that they read our emails but choose not to reply to them which is honestly so unprofessional of them. So good luck with that! Your best bet in getting your questions answered is asking your peers in the class. Be sure to join the GroupMe or create one if there isn’t one already!

This is a great class that teaches valuable material! The grading consists of a midterm, final, discussion posts, and a one page mini essay. The mini essay is great as the prof gives you 3 opportunities throughout the quarter to submit the mini essay, so if you have a lighter week 3 you can get the assignment out of the way early, or you can wait til week 9 to submit. While tedious, the readings are interesting and informative. There are 2 discussion posts you have to answer every week with a brief 4-5 sentence response. Then you must respond to 2 discussion posts in 3-4 sentences, so not a huge time investment. The midterm and the final are short answer and essay based, but if you did the discussion posts you’ll be set. The lectures are filmed and edited by the UCLA film dept, so lectures seem more like mini documentaries. And they are SHORT. Most were under 30 minutes. If you are good at managing time then this asynchronous class is for you. Sucks to not have more communication with the prof and TA tho. Wish it hadn’t taken til week 10 to get my midterm back from week 5