Prof. Keller is the best!!

Great Class , highly recommended. You will learn ALOT about Africa.

Professor Keller is a very nice guy and his tests dont have any surprises. I liked this class because I thought that the material was interesting because most people don't have a clue about African politics. The class has case studies including South Africa,Sudan, Nigeria, and Rwanda. The midterm has ID's which you pick 5 out of ten of, and there is one mandatory essay. The Final exam has to do with 3 essays. He gives you three questions and randomly picks 2 of them and there is a third suprise question which is not that tough. The questions he gives are mostly compare and contrast dealing with the case studies. One thing that Keller does need to improve on is that he talks really fast and it is hard to take notes despite the power point, and there is a lot of reading. Other than this Keller is a really nice guy and is always willing to help in office hours and I would recommend his course.

Ugh. What a waste on time, on a topic that should have been incredibly interesting. A total no no.

The class is interesting people. You dont have to do all the readings. Pick the ones that are close to lectures. Go over the lecture notes and you will be fine. Also, the book critique was fun. Be creative on it. You will be more than fine.

This professor was ok. I would not recommend the class. However, if you can't find anything else it's not the end of the world. Lectures are very helpful. You must go to these. The readings can be helpful to enforce lecture material. But you would probably be fine skipping them. The TA's want you to do the readings and you might get called on to discuss them. His TA's are very bad. That was probably the worst part of the class. There are a midterm, final and book critique. The book critique was busy work and vague. The midterm and final were not hard. For the final he gives you the 3 essay questions, 2 of which will be chosen. And then there is a final essay question that is supposed to be comprehensive. Overall, I've had better classes at UCLA but it could have been worse.

In terms of the course - do all of the readings. They will definitely help you when taking the final. As for the lectures - use the lecture slides to pick out key terms and concepts you should know and understand when doing the readings.

Midterm: consists of 10 IDs (but you choose 5) and an essay (and you have 3 to choose from). The IDs will be obvious things he points out in class as well as a few from the Nigeria case study. The IDs come from the lecture slides. Essays included African independence movement, construction of identities, and one was randomly about Tribes (relating to a reading we had).

Final: Three essays. He will send out three essays for you to study beforehand and have a student at random choose two of them and then have a third mandatory question.

Evaluation of professor/course: He would go off on tangents, but is deeply passionate about African politics. Towards the end we start watching a bunch of great documentaries.

If you get Lisa Mueller as a TA - DROP OUT NOW. She is condescending, rude, and will take out her personal bias against you. However, I heard if you go to her office hours she'll like you more. Reiterating what the other reviewer said, if you have a shitty TA, it's hard to get a fair grade in the course.

Overall, if you're into African politics, this is a cool course and you'll read a really great novel. I liked the class and hated my TA. Professor Keller is a great guy, not the best professor, but definitely a great class.

Wow, I can hardly believe these posts! Either someone has kidnapped the old professor and an alien took over his body, or he has simply changed. This was definitely one of the best classes that I have ever taken at UCLA! The lectures were clear and time was always taken for questions and discussions, which made the class more lively. Professor Keller is clearly knowledgeable on the subject. Also, films and readings were very engaging, although some assigned readings were very long. What sucks are the stupid TA's. If you get unlucky with a TA who has personal issues and something to prove, getting fair grades can be challenging. This was my only negative critique of this class. I would definitely recommend professor Keller!

As a lecturer he is very ineffective and despite what other people say, I'm not sure that he's more knowledgeable than the next professor about their own subject. He does a fair job of reading straight from the text - but then again, what is that really worth? He fails at syncing his lecture topics and PowerPoint, so you're constantly having to try to structure it yourself; it's probably easier to just pay attention to what he's saying rather than trying to follow the slides. He goes off on tangents that are unrelated, backtracks to talk about previous topics in the middle of discussing newer ones, and doesn't directly answer questions. There is a wealth of interesting knowledge to be learned in this class, but Keller doesn't really do the topic or subject matter justice. Do the readings, though! V. interesting/insightful and I've learned more from them.