Professor Gurval is great and extremely knowledgeable about his subject. The class is not focused on history so much as it is very heavy on interpretation of what biographers thought and how they viewed their subjects, reminiscent of an English course. The course was interesting, but towards the end of the course the assignments sort of stacked up so that we had two papers due within a week of the final. The professor also continued to grade me down when he didn't agree with an argument I made and even when I applied his advice and criticisms to my essays. The midterm and final were a lot of work in which you have to write 4 essays about different biographers and their work. Other than this, the course was very interesting.