History 11B is not a class that just hands out As
Professor Goldman is very passionate about Chinese history, and is very willing to open up and help you out in the class if you're willing to do the work. The professor is very available and very concerned for her students.

The class itself is very intensive when it comes to reading.
The syllabus says to expect 100-150 pages of reading a week, but it's more like "above 200" range.
It does require a lot of studying and a lot of effort. Whether this is good or bad for you is up to your interpretation. I found the readings to be very interesting.

Only 2 papers (each 5 pgs) are assigned. TAs can sometimes be a bit incompetent, so I found myself actually asking the professor for help, and she was much more helpful.

The final exam requires a key term section, along with 2 essays.
For the key terms, you're given 10, and have to identify 6, however, these 10 come from a pool of 100.
Each essay comes from a choice of 2, but Goldman's study guides give you 8 possible prompt for each of the two essays. Her class however, is very straightforward. She throws no curve balls on her exams, and if you stay on top of things, you will survive.

All in all, I found the class to be VERY rewarding.

The professor's a good lecturer, and she does a solid job covering the fairly broad swathe of material. The readings are interesting and relevant, and never felt like a waste of time. Your grade is determined by two essays, a final, and section participation. The essays prompts are pretty tough tbh, but the final's easy.

The professor tries her best explaining her material and overall, her class is very doable as long as you do the readings. The readings are very important to make sure you get full credit for participation (20%) during discussion. It is also the main thing tested on the final exam questions, so definitely, don't procrastinate on those. But other than that, she is a friendly professor and nice person to get to know during office hours.

Selling all the textbooks for $20! Hmu at ********** if interested.

If you’re feeling reluctant about enrolling then don’t be. This class was stylish and prudently planned to encourage students to begin the writing process early. Which is good for you because, let’s be honest, you’re lazy. So am I. The texts were highly curated and, if I were a better student, I could’ve written my capstone paper by sourcing only the assigned readings. What Andrea Goldman has created is a capstone course that is uniquely different and distinctively cool, and its seamlessness is an example of her creativity and capability as an instructor.

Assignments & discussion: 30%
Peer review: 10%
Preliminary draft: 15%
Final paper: 45%

Know that in this class they really want you to get a good knowledge of Chinese history. The weekly readings, both textbook and for discussion, are a lot and take a lot of time to do. But if you do like history you will find the readings all pretty interesting and worth the time. If you don't then don't take the class. The two papers, the final, and discussion participation compose your grade. In the papers they really want you to be analytical. Professor Goldman holds office hour very regularly and she gives very insightful help for papers if you go to her. Because of COVID, the final is two 5-page papers, which is a lot. But if you work hard you will be fine. During the entire quarter there were never any recall quizzes or exams whatsoever, it's all about analyzing, which is either a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it. I think an A is by no means easy, but I feel I've learned a lot. Professor is very good at lecturing, she is very clear.

Know that in this class they really want you to get a good knowledge of Chinese history. The weekly readings, both textbook and for discussion, are a lot and take a lot of time to do. But if you do like history you will find the readings all pretty interesting and worth the time. If you don't then don't take the class. The two papers, the final, and discussion participation compose your grade. In the papers they really want you to be analytical. Professor Goldman holds office hour very regularly and she gives very insightful help for papers if you go to her. Because of COVID, the final is two 5-page papers, which is a lot. But if you work hard you will be fine. During the entire quarter there were never any recall quizzes or exams whatsoever, it's all about analyzing, which is either a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it. I think an A is by no means easy, but I feel I've learned a lot. Professor is very good at lecturing, she is very clear.

An extremely rewarding class to take if you are interested in learning about Chinese history! Professor Goldman is extremely passionate about the subject and is super thorough and organized in her lectures. This class is a LOT of work, upwards of 150+ pages of reading each week and I wrote about 23 pages worth of essays (two 5-7 page assigned papers with 2 weeks to complete each, final was a take-home test of two 5 page essay questions that we had 2 weeks to complete). Taking this class during a covid quarter online, each paper was worth 25% of your grade, the final 30%, and attending discussion was the last 20%. The papers and final were based on the primary source assigned readings, so make sure to understand those well—my TA, Mindi Zhang, was EXTREMELY helpful in analyzing the readings during discussions especially if I was unable to keep up with the reading that week. Prof. Goldman also requires you to attend her office hours at least once over zoom, but I came 3 times during each paper assignment as she was amazingly helpful in constructing my arguments each essay, and a genuinely pleasant person to get to know. So far this is the toughest class I have taken, but definitely worth it!

In this class, like many humanities classes, your grade is entirely dependent on your TA. Discussion sections had mandatory attendance where we would discuss the weekly primary source readings (textbook readings weren't discussed, they could be considered optional). The grading breakdown was: discussion participation, two 6-page long papers, and a take-home final which consisted of responding to two prompts. Discussion participation grade was given mainly based on timely attendance to the zoom meeting. I gave about one answer/contribution each section and got full credit. The course is extremely interesting, I took it to fulfill my history GE requirement and got to learn a lot more about my background as a Chinese-American. The papers were written responses to the primary readings in class, and the discussion section was very helpful in preparing for them, so I'd recommend taking notes during them. Other reviewers say this course was too reading-intensive, but you can definitely get by reading just the primary sources and not the textbook readings. The papers are not timed. Lectures involved Prof. Goldman reading off slides, and she was very engaging. She requires you to stop by her office hours at least once during the quarter, which I would recommend regardless because she's very clearly passionate and knowledgeable about Chinese history. It was very refreshing talking with her and being able to ask her for help generating thesis or topic ideas for the papers. I personally loved this class but I could see why other people without a background or interest in Chinese history would have an issue with it. I'd definitely recommend taking it with Goldman and my TA Mindi if you can though, as both were extremely helpful teachers.

One of the most reading intensive classes I've ever had. Too much work required as a GE class. Her tests are straight forward and she gives you a study guide but the material to be covered is too broad to grasp entirely