This is a great class and I recommend taking it. Dr. Alden is a good and clear lecturer, though he does talk a bit slowly sometimes. There is a lot of reading required for this class, but most of it is interesting, so it's not too much of a burden. We had to do weekly discussion posts (took maybe half an hour) and we had two midterms and a final. The exams were all take home exams with paragraph and short-essay length responses.

Khyla Horton was my TA and she's great, so if you can take her section I recommend it. The discussions in this class aren't too structured, but they're quite interesting and it's an environment most people feel comfortable speaking in.

Coming in to the class I was really scared because there was no reviews on Bruin Walk for this professor. I thought that I could potentially be going into a really hard class to pass, but that wasn't true thankfully. Professor Young is an awesome Professor! He really cares about his students and the guest speakers he brought to class were awesome too! He uploaded a pre recorded lecture for Tuesdays and had an optional (not mandatory!) class on Thursdays. The optional lectures were so helpful because some students couldn't attend these and it wouldn't hurt them. Again, he really does care about his students! Also they were helpful because they were more of just a review and went into more depth about the content we read and his lecture for Tuesday.
For this quarter there was 3 exams. They were short responses to a couple of questions. They were easy to answer as long as you read the readings, which wasn't hard because literally all of the readings were so interesting and eye opening. Make sure to go to discussion. Even discussion was super interesting. The TA's were all really cool and mine was really, really helpful and accommodating.
This class was so interesting and I'm so glad I took it. Professor Young is a great professor and hopefully I'll be able to take another class with him again!