Her lectures were incredibly disorganized: the material was not chronological, and she tended to jump back and forth through different centuries, empires, rulers, etc without a clear connection between them. She also jumped abruptly from artwork to building to ruler to empire, etc. Despite all of this Professor Horvat expected that we would know all of the material mentioned or described in seconds during the lecture, even while mixed in with different centuries, rulers, etc. Therefore, this class was incredibly confusing, with a huge workload, and a professor that is not very approachable.

While I did get a good grade on the midterm, the average for my section was 62% with no expected curve. It took me over a week of constant studying to do well on the midterm, having to neglect other classes (this is meant to be a GE). She was a difficult professor and structured her classes in a completely incomprehensible manner, and unfortunately it has deterred me from considering further art history classes (especially on medieval concepts).

No. I took this as an ge bc my major classes were closed. I was skeptical bc she had no bruinwalk reviews when I enrolled and my skepticism was right. Every lecture with this professor seemed very unorganized and unprepared and the slides she would provide were very useless. They only included images with little to no text which made it difficult to understand her key points. It felt like she was just talking about whatever she felt like and she said “um” too many times and continually paused during lectures as if she was trying to make up more insignificant stuff to stay. She also did not record any of these lectures so it was impossible to go back to them to study for the exams or get information for homework assignments, not that her lectures were super important but they were our only source of information besides the readings she gave us. These readings however were unreasonable in length- she would often give 50-80 pages of readings per lecture (lecture was twice a week) and it was very difficult keeping up with these readings every week. The only helpful aspect was that she made us submit notes which helped me to digest the readings though, this was difficult as well since she only wanted a short 3 point summary, 3 key terms, and 3 artworks. Honestly this assignment lost meaning since towards the end I just could not keep up and was only skimming through the readings and writing any 3 points that were not necessarily “key” points. Being part of a class GroupMe chat, I can also guarantee that almost no one actually understood what was important and did the full readings. There was simply too much information per reading and I could not tell what was truly important since it was just not possible for me to remember all of the information. There were two papers for this class as well, both of which seemed very irrelevant and unnecessary to what we were learning. One was about the sensory experience of visiting a mosque and the other was about being a medieval monk. First of all, she never mentioned monks in any of the lectures and suddenly expected us to be a professional about how these monks lived. I had immense difficulty putting myself in the shoes of a monk and she gave us absolutely no resources to complete this paper. Her instructions were extremely vague and provided no guidance for this very odd assignment. Next, her exams, both the midterm and the final, were even more unreasonable and unfair to students who had such little resources or support from this professor. She gave us 50+ artworks to memorize how they looked, their dates, patrons, location, and be able to write a page worth about it. Despite making us remember SO MUCH information for this exam, she only asked us FIVE out of these OVER FIFTY works she asked us to memorize. While she gave us a “bonus question” she was otherwise very strict and gave no leeway for the exam and was not reassuring or supportive of our success. I truly do not think she cared about students as she was super dismissive of student concerns and questions and I personally did not feel confident asking her any questions and the only way I was able to get through this class was because I had a good TA who was very understanding and made students feel supported during this difficult time of taking Horvat’s class. As a GE this class should not be at such an unreasonable level, this class felt like an upperdiv course despite a majority of the class not being art majors or even having any interest in this subject. If I had ANY interest in art history, it is all gone. Truly the worst GE I could have taken.
tldr- don’t take this class as a ge :)

DO NOT LISTEN: TAKE THIS CLASS

i made an account NOW simply because i knew how the comments would be. the people in this class as a whole were not willing to put in even a smidge of effort. the groupme for this class was full of individuals who refused to study for the midterm for even 45 min, despite every term and question being provided in a study guide. do NOT listen to people who do not care about their grades complaining! in addition, many of these people laughed at this woman’s accent and refused to follow any directions (leaving and obstructing the screen during the final exam… despite being told to sit down 2 min prior.)

this was my EASIEST UCLA CLASS I HAVE TAKEN (i am a neuro major!). here’s the breakdown:
- weekly readings with reading notes (100 words. most TA’s don’t care if you even read the whole thing. skim the texts! they reiterate important things during lecture).
- two papers that were informal in style and were creative writings
- one midterm
- one final

This is a memorization heavy class, so just write down everything she says or record it like I did. Also, I will say that for the midterm and final, there was excessive amounts of content on the study guide when the tests themselves were very short and simple. But I studied for both of these only two days prior, and I received over a 100% on both. She provided extra credit, content was fair if you attended a few lectures prior, and the TA’s hosted review sessions and made study content prior. not a very engaging lecturer so a bit of a boring class, BUT NOT HARD.

anyone who tells you this class is hard is lazy and wants to blame their instructor for their lack of effort. try to get into a discussion with a kind TA, and put in like 15% effort and you’re good.

DO NOT TAKE THIS PROFESSOR FOR AN ART HISTORY GE! We are given weekly lecture readings AND section notes to submit for participation. Two papers are given, but have no structure/ instruction to them whatsoever -- one was about the Hagia Sophia, and you are expected to use architectural/ art terms to describe the building. The second paper was about being a monk. The papers were given little to no instruction and was expected to know how to do them on my own.

The professor is also HORRIBLE at explaining content. She drinks water every 30 seconds and says "um" a lot. She offers no lecture recordings and her slide content is only pictures with NO WORDS. As for the midterm, she was very unrealistic and unfair. We were given a study guide to memorize 50 buildings/ art pieces, vocab, and historical facts, but were only tested on 5 of each...

This class is a very difficult GE, and some would say is a lot harder than an upper-division art history course. The only reason I survived was through my TA.

Only take this class if you hate yourself. It's not an easy GE, and I have taken many art history classes before. The midterm is from another planet, and the TA took weeks to update grades/respond. Just don't even bother.