I took this class in my freshman year. It is still the best class I have taken at UCLA. There were two essays, a group project and weekly reports (that were only a paragraph long). Hirano is an extremely engaging professors, he doesn't care ıf the students get the small details. He emphasizes the students understanding the topics at a more general level. The topics discussed in class, the figures that are taught and the textbooks that are assigned are all very interesting. There is attendance in lectures, but even if there wasn't, I still would've gone to every lecture. The TA Rory was also amazing. I hope I can take another class by Hirano when I am a student at UCLA.

This class is great! There are two 5-6 (double spaced) page papers, and 2 assignments per week (graded for completion). If you have good time management you'll be fine, but it'll be tough if you don't, as there can sometimes be 100+ pages of reading in a week. The class is manageable if you pay attention in lectures and do the readings, it will be hard to write the essays if you don't. Lectures were interesting and covered a lot of different anti-colonial thinkers. Overall, I really enjoyed the class and the material, but it might be a little tougher than other History GEs.

Even though I ended up dropping this class after the first two weeks, I strongly feel that this was a class that had a lot of potential to be taught well but the professor made me absolutely hate it. If you're the type of person who does not like to be taught in lectures and just likes to hear your fellow peers talk about what they thought about the concept then this class is for you. I took this class when classes were online for the first few weeks of the quarter, the professor was extremely accommodating, he refused to record classes for students who could not attend, as a student who was in a country with a large difference, attending classes at 5 am was very challenging. He would make students read his slides out loud and then talk about topics that have nothing to do with his background slide. He also wanted our cameras to be on for the entire lecture and discussion section. The only circumstance I would recommend this class in is if you like participating in class and want to learn on your own rather than being taught by a professor.