I've had Shuger for 10A, Elizabethan Lit (151), and Milton, and I absolutely love her. Yes, she can seem scatterbrained at first if you take her for 10A, yes there is historical emphasis and yes the final is date-based (and only about half an hour long, which I thought was nice). 10A isn't the class I'd start with to form an opinion of her teaching. She is easily one of my favorite professors at UCLA and Elizabethan with her is likely my favorite class to date. She knows so much about everything and she is the nicest, most approachable person. Her lectures are entertaining and so valuable; I learned so much from her. She's so passionate about her subject and makes it really accessible, and she's hilarious.
She's pretty lenient, too. Elizabethan as a subject was wonderful with her, but it also wasn't a lot of work. Short one-page papers every week on whatever you feel like talking about and her translate-into-modern-English quizzes (which every class gets). I recommend her wholeheartedly.

She is not a great lecturer. Having said that, I did not go to her lecture after the third week because I got more out of my discussion section. Her lecture was podcasted so she didn't release her notes. I would have liked it the other way around. The material was interesting but hard! Her final exam was so pointless, in my opinion, because you had to know all these birth dates for authors and crap. Now all I remember is that Shakespeare died in 1616.
Avoid her if you can, at least for this class.

Despite what the previous reviews may say, I quite enjoyed Professor Shuger and got A LOT out of her class. She is so obviously in love with what she teaches, that she makes you excited about a topic that is not exactly popular. She also has a good understanding of what her students are capable of accomplishing. She seems to be able to sense when we won't be able to cover things in class, and so some portions of the reading were cancelled. This is beneficial, because that means everything we read is also discussed in class. Most of her essay topics were engaging and interesting to write about, and although the grading is tough it also forces you to reconsider the problems with your writing and change them.

The reading load is heavy, yes, but not unmanageable. Towards the end of the course, it is mostly short poems, whereas during the beginning and middle they are epic poems or plays, which do take some time to get through especially seeing as the language is rather archaic and unfamiliar. In the end, I think Professor Shuger was a great instructor for this course, and interesting. Despite the fact that sometimes her lectures were hard to follow, at least she was so engaging that you didn't fall asleep.

I took Shuger for 10A. It might just be a hard class with difficult material, but I didn't enjoy her at all. Her lectures were everywhere and hard to follow. It wasn't until the last few classes that she realized a PowerPoint might be helpful in assisting her sporadic lectures. The final is terribly difficult and useless to the process of learning. We were misled from the start when we were constantly warned that dates would be included on the final and that all dates were fair game. By the time the final came around, there were only 2 or 3 questions that requested dates.... Got by with a B- in the class, but that's because my TA understood the difficulty of the class and was a tad more lenient on us.

I entered Shuger's English 10A class in the spring excited to start the 10 series and ready to learn more about English. Her first lecture (in Kinsey) was filled to capacity so my friend and I had to sit on the steps, but by the end of the quarter, only 1/3 of the people continued to show up for class. Shuger's lectures were initially very engaging and interesting, but halfway through the course they became rather dry. She either emails you or posts up on the class website the 3 lectures for each week if you happened to miss them, so attending class is pretty optional, unless you enjoy her frequent tangents and wittiness. The class itself composes of 1 quiz per week during discussion, two 5-6 page papers, and a final exam. The papers are more heavily weighted and the topics are very accessible. The quizzes in discussion, however, tend to be quite arbitrary and difficult - some you can score really high on and very low on others. They are mostly based on translating or paraphrasing certain excerpts from the reading that week. Depending on your TA, students can do extra credit to even out poor quiz grades. Thankfully, I had an AMAZING TA, Tara Fickle, and she gave my section 25 points of possible EC out of 100 point quizzes. She also let us do presentations on authors for an additional 25 points.

As for the final exam...I think this is where Shuger gets me, and perhaps many other students, extremely frustrated. The final exam is worth 20% of your grade and composes of memorizing all the birth and death dates of each author studied (nearly 25), the publication date of each work read, and the historical events that occured from the arrival of Christianity in England to the death of John Milton. The final was pretty hard for me, especially when we had to name the titles of excerpts from the various works we read in class. I really thought this was a waste of time. My roommates thought it was ridiculous, too.

Overall, the readings were enjoyable and the discussions helped throughout the quarter. I ended up getting a B for the quarter. I hope Shuger doesn't keep the same final exam format for later classes. In order to do well on the final, studying - or memorizing - a week before is crucial. DO NOT cram. Take the class if you have an equal love for history and English. Good luck!