You read a lot because it will show on your papers eventually. In lectures we only watch movies and take notes. This class is wonderful despite its horrific time (5:30pm-8:30pm. Dr Fernando is very genuine, you will surely love his class!

Very fun class! The course covers history of Latin America from European colonization to the present. The main book used was "Born in Blood and Fire" by John Charles Chasteen. The book has two components, a main text (that you may or may not be able to find for free online...) and a supplemental reader that I purchased (~12$). Discussions were mandatory, once per week in a group of maybe 15. Most of the discussions involved the week's assigned readings so be sure to read them to avoid contributing to awkward silence.

There is no weekly homework. We were required to visit a cultural exhibit at either LACMA or the Skirball center (if El Sueño Americano is still at the Skirball center I highly recommend it). We also had several opportunities to get extra credit by watching movies. There were two or three 10-question online quizzes directly from the text (they were not difficult at all). The midterm project was to write a historical fiction narrative set in Latin America and the final was several take-home essay questions. Profesor Perez-Montesinos extended the final submission time by two days due to COVID. The TAs are very helpful and available for any assistance on writing.

Profe seems very passionate about the subject, but you have to listen in class if you want to get anything out of it because his slides are mostly broad bullet points. He likes to focus on studying voices that are often previously ignored in the study of Latin American history. The readings were all pretty interesting. Only about 2/3 of students attended lecture and those that didn't seemed to do fine. Overall, the class was not very hard and very much worth taking for GE credit.

Fantastic class.

I was doing good throughout the whole quarter, but TA ethan gave me a really crapy grade for the final paper. Because of my final paper my A dropped to a B-.

I personally really enjoyed this class! Because I took it winter quarter of 2022 it was completely virtual but I still feel like I got a good grasp on the material. Professor Montesinos is clearly very passionate about what he does and even though lectures aren't necessarily required to get a good grade, they are still fascinating and not at all boring. I also enjoyed that instead of a real midterm we had a narrative paper. The quizzes were not hard at all as long as you actually did the readings! Readings were definitely long and I would recommend doing them, but it's a small price to pay for not really needing to attend lectures or take a hard final. Overall I would recommend this class as an easy-ish GE, and it fulfills your diversity requirement!

a class so good it made me minor in the subject

legit so easy def take this class. A solid amount of reading but other than that lectures are super unnecessary to go to and midterm and final are short papers that aren't graded harshly at all.