Professor Cooney's class is a bit all over the place and unorganized, however it is easy to get a passing grade in the class. We were graded based on the midterm, section participation/attendance, final research paper (or final podcast), and a final. Your grade really depends on your section TA, I had Nadia Ben-Marzouk, she really helped by going over what professor covered and clearing up any questions. The sections focus on the lectures and after week 3 they're basically workshops for your 10-12 page final research paper- make sure you choose a topic you're interested in or else it'll just be terrible. In section, you'll be turning in some short prompts or outlines every two or three weeks that will all help you start your final paper weeks in advance rather than wait last minute. For the final, Professor Cooney will share about six essay prompts but will ultimately end up choosing two, so you know what you're final is about and can be prepared on what to mention. The class overall is alright and although she posts her slides online her commentary in class is more useful. The workload for this class is very manageable, however, as I said before, this class lacks a bit of organization so if you're a strong writer and do good on your own I recommend it.

I'm selling all 3 of the books required for this class for $20 all together, please feel free to email me and inquire:
deleonhelen31@gmail.com

Loved the material of this class, but it does come with a LOT of reading.

Cleopatra -$4
The Woman Who Would be King - $10
The World Until Yesterday - $12

email for books: mandri99@gmail.com

When taking Prof. Cooney's class, it is important to consider her as a professor and the class itself as two separate aspects. She herself is engaging and entertaining as a lecturer, she speaks very informally and in layman's terms, so you feel like you're having more of a conversation than a boring drawn out textbook narration. However, since her classes are very based on her lectures and speaking coverage, its very inconsistent. She is definitely knowledgeable and the class does try to cover various subregions, but you can definitely tell that her focus and interests are heavy towards some, so I felt like some days of the class were just not necessary. Also, due to some day offs in the general quarter's calendar in addition to some lectures going into the following ones, we were off schedule according to the syllabus and the last civilizations (China/India) were definitely just squeezed in. The main assignment in this class is a research essay or podcast (something they were testing out as an option my quarter) that you have until the end of the quarter to submit, so your personal time was more focused on whatever you chose and likely didn't really think deeply towards the others. It is necessary to pay attention though because the final itself were 2 critical analysis essays of any region, but she gave the possible prompts ahead of time so you can review for yourself. Overall, a good class that doesnt take a lot of stress if you can time manage yourself and not be too reliant on in-class/TA help. They didn't regulate how TA's prepared you for the essay writing, so others had more feedback and mini due dates while others were kind of just a ask-me-if-you-need-help. I ended up switching discussions to have a more helpful TA and that surely made a difference in the course of the class.
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Selling required texts:
Cleopatra: A Biography by Duane W. Roller
The Woman who Would be King by Kara Cooney
The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond
text (925)-698-1552 that you're inquiring about AN N EA 15
(Kept the books because I bought them, but definitely not necessary to buy full price to do well in the class!)

Profesor Cooney is one of the most engaging lecturers and the course content is so interesting!! However I bought all the books and didn’t crack open a single one all quarter long. I really thought it would come back to bite me and it totally didn’t. Going to lectures and engaging in discussions are the best way to prepare. Cooney got rid of the midterm and gave the option to do a 10 minute paper or a 10 minute podcast. I picked the podcast which turned out to essentially be an entire paper plus recording/sound editing/mixing and while it was rewarding it was very time consuming. Stick to the paper if you just want to be in and out.

This class gave me anxiety. Your grade is completely dependent on your TA. My TA, Vera, was nice, but disorganized and took forever to respond to emails. She also incorrectly reported our grades as all F's and I'm still trying to get the Dean's honor list notation on my transcript from this quarter. Research paper was kinda hard. Discussion boards are a must.

The lectures were really interesting but she wasn't able to cover China because she spent a lot of time talking about Egypt (her specialty). There's a lot of readings assigned and then there's the research project which is a pretty heavy load for a GE course and you can't really use the reading material for the class as a source because they want new sources. There's no midterm but there is a final and she'll post a list of possible questions she might ask and choose maybe 4 from the list. I just studied the answers for those questions the night before and did fine for the final.

Selling "Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations" textbook
text: (213) 352-7569
or
email: hakter13@g.ucla.edu

good luck with the class

I took the course as a hybrid meaning that all my lectures were posted online and I only had to attend discussion once a week. The lectures were incredibly interesting and easy to follow as she presented all the material as a story rather than just reducing history into dates and names. In terms of grading, depending on your TA the essays varied in difficulty but as long as you go to office hours to figure out what your TA is looking for, you can get an A!

I'm selling all the required books as a bundle for a total of $28! Email me at evelynwan@gmail.com if you're interested!
Books:
-The Woman Who Would be King
-Cleopatra-A Biography
-The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations
-The World Until Yesterday (PDF doc)

Grading is handled by the T.A.s and for the reason that TAs often change, my review is mostly for Professor Cooney. Her lectures were interesting, although she unnecessarily injects her own political views into the discussion. This is a bit hypocritical, for when students asked about whether or not ancient Egyptians were 'black' or darker toned skin, she told us to stop "obsessing" about these types of issues and projecting our own ideas of 21st century race relations onto the ancient past. True, but she should also do the same.
What really disappointed me about Cooney was our after-class discussion. I approached her with questions about other Egyptologist's, like John Anthony West. She was very closed minded about new findings & research. She even told me to rely on wikipedia rather than on books I mentioned regarding these topics. When I told her wikipedia is unreliable for anything other then hard facts/general reference, due to biased/anonymous editing, she scoffed at me. I thought professors, esp. those at UCLA, would have better suggestions for research than wikipedia? What we had discussed must have angered her, because over the weekend, she had added a slide to the following class lecture. I know she added it because it had nothing to do with the day's subject, instead it had a photo regarding a topic I had mentioned to her. Specifically, it was a picture of a book, alongside a picture of a UFO. I could not believe how petty this was! The book doesnt mention anything about aliens, it was about dating the pyramids as older then 2000BCE, and written by a geologist. If she took the time to skim through its contents she would have known this. But instead, she tried to humiliate me in front of the class by associating new research to unrelated alien theories in order to defend her own dogmas. Not ok and very unprofessional. She is not a supportive professor, and if you disagree with her, she will use her status to try and demean you. Beware.

It was a pretty easy class overall. There's assigned videos and readings for each week, but you can get away with not reading them. Participation is pretty important, but as long as you say something once every two weeks, answer the weekly discussion question, and go to the 2 mandatory meetings with the prof, it should be alright. Final was a 10 page paper, and it was graded pretty harshly in my opinion. Recommend to take it if you want a fairly easy ge.

I am selling the books

The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations
The Woman Who Would Be King
Cleopatra- A Biography

All in great condition for $6 each

Email me castilloamanda1997@gmail.com!