I really like this professor, so I decided to take this course. It’s super interesting; however, the movies were a bit boring at times, and watching them at 9 AM for three hours was tough. Since none of the films are in English, you have to pay close attention to read the subtitles.

The class included three quizzes based on thematic lectures and three essays, including the final. I felt the grading was on the stricter side, but the professor is one of the best teachers here.

Don't let my C+ freak you out. I had my first child two days before school started. Mcbride is a good professor, and his midterms are pretty easy to do if you come to class and take notes. His papers were a little strangely graded since the T.A. told me my final paper was very promising, but I ended up with a C-. It seems if you have time to take your writing to office hours and have him look it over, you should be okay.

I like this cluster a lot, but the topics were heavy. Similar to first quarter, two essays and the final. Manageable workload.

30% midterm exam; 30% 4-5 pages term paper; 40% 4-5 pages paper for final; 1% extra credit possible if you attend a film screening or go to a museum on your own time. Three novels/novellas assigned for the class. You can get away with only reading one of them (the one you have to write about for the term paper) if you choose the non-novel/novella option for the midterm and the final paper. Professor McBride offers two options for all the midterm and the papers, so you do have some flexibility there. Interesting lectures and content materials. Textbook readings are not required (you won't be tested on them) but I found them to be useful, especially regarding writing for your papers (or just further preparing for the midterm). Professor McBride also posts some primary sources for each week's lectures. They are not required, but can be useful in helping you better understand historical materials/context covered in lectures (also one of the prompt options for the final paper is to analyze a primary source of your choosing). Pretty straightforward class that teaches you a lot about Soviet history.

Tests are difficult but if you show up for class you can easily get an A, he's very straightforward, look at the lectures and you can easily get an A

Professor McBride is a really interesting and funny teacher. I loved going to his lectures because he's so nice and makes the class enjoyable. He doesn't record the lectures but posts the slides online the next day. He thinks students who go to class do better. Sometimes he mentions things that aren't on the slides, so it's good to be there. He also offers 2 options for extra credit, but you choose only 1.

For the class, we read three very short books that went along with the midterm, a paper, and a final paper. The midterm was in a blue book, and we could choose between 20 multiple-choice questions and a short essay or 10 identification questions and a short essay. The answers to the multiple-choice questions were all in the slides. We also had to write two 4-5 page papers, one regular paper and one final paper.

Professor McBride is a great teacher, and I would definitely take his class again.

I never really went to lecture or thoroughly read the readings, but I found that I was still able to get the information as the discussion section really gets into the course material. I took Danielle Hanzalik as a TA, and if you have a chance to take her, then I really recommend her. She was super understanding of my situation and kept my attention, especially since discussion sections were two hours. The final exam has you defining 6 terms and writing 2 essays, but the study guide prepares you really well.

The class material itself is very interesting and the workload is very reasonable, but the professors can be hit or miss. This quarter we focused on the Holocaust, Armenian Genocide, and French colonialism. My favorite professors were Rothberg and McBride; I found their lectures genuinely very engaging and interesting. Rothberg’s approach to learning about the Holocaust honestly really fascinated me and I looked forward to his lectures the most. While I could tell Prof. Sengul was knowledgeable in her subject, her lectures were extremely dense and difficult to follow and were very hard to understand considering most of us had little background knowledge on Armenia.

Besides that, the assignments (which are mostly short written work) are very doable and helpful in understanding the content.
I’ve generally heard good things about most of the TA’s, and I had Yair (fall) and Stephen (winter) both of which I really liked. Both are very understanding and genuinely care about their students. Two hour discussions can be pretty tedious, but I felt comfortable enough to participate and we had plenty of breaks/group activities to change up the dynamic of the class. I recommend taking the discussion later in the week, as most written work is due before class, and that gives you more time to complete it. I also ended up taking the Nazi Hunting seminar with McBride in the spring and loved that class - easy workload, interesting topics discussed, and overall the professor has a lot of professional experience that is very interesting to learn about - 10/10 recommend.

I love this cluster, but it is a lot of reading and essay writing. It's super interesting and educational, so if you want to get humanities GEs out of the way I would definitely take it.