He is a extremely nice professor and seems like he really cares. This quarter the class met twice a week scheduled for 2 hours however he only keeps us for the first 50 minutes and the rest of the time is to ask questions if you need to. he has changed his style and it's not papers anymore but an in class midterm and final. he has slides which he puts his quotes on and he lectures for 50 minutes on the readings. The test was 5 passages (all quotes he went over in lecture and thats all you have to memorize are the quotes from lecture) we had to identify the writer and the name of the work and write a coherent paragraph or two about the passage and its relevance. He is a very nice and all around great professor i would recommend him to a friend for sure. Theres technically quite a bit of reading, however i didnt read the majority but paid attention and recorded his lectures and got an A on the midterm with a few hours of review.

Your grade pretty much depends on the TA, and I had Roey, who was great. Pagden gives engaging lectures and I really enjoyed taking his class. Your grade is based on attendance in section/short responses to the reading, midterm and final that aren't particularly hard.

Professor Pagden is absolutely brilliant! I had initial qualms about taking this class, and sitting through the first lecture did not really help at all because he is so smart and talks a little too fast sometimes, that it just seems like his mind is all over the place!

But I'm glad that I decided to stick with this class-it was very interesting. The class is graded according to 2 papers- and he gives you several prompts for each paper topic that it's just very hard not to get an A in this class. Just pick one that suits you best!

I think that one of the ngatives of this course was the reading-it was a little difficult to understand. However, Professor Pagden does go through the important points during lecture, so I would recommend going to lecture so you know what to write your paper on... he also doesn't post the lecture slides online either, so bring a laptop to class and take good notes!!

But overall, wonderful professor. Now that I graduated from UCLA with a polisci degree, I can look back and say that he is one of the most knowledgeble and best professors I had here in my four years.