To be frank, if you need to take a 97 seminar, I would suggest picking a different professor. Waugh assigns one page single spaced papers, which is essentially three to four pages double spaced, every single week. You have to read hundreds of pages for these one page papers every week, and it gets exhausting. When she grades these papers she is very nit-picky and grades very hard on them. Even if you hit all the points and understand the themes of the reading, and give a good analysis she will find something to dock points off your essay, such as word choice or very minor grammatical issues. I've never gotten an A or A- on any of the papers and she never gives you clear guidelines on the grading criteria. If you want to go to graduate school or law school, and need to keep a high GPA, I would suggest another professor.

To be honest, Waugh is an amazing professor who is extremely knowledgable on the Civil War. Being in her class was a great experience. That being said, she expects a lot out of you; this class should meet the writing requirement with how much you have to write. As others have said, you have to write a one page single page response to the readings once a week, and you're also required to talk about the readings during discussion. At the end of the quarter, you will take what you can from the weekly assignments and write a 10-12 page paper. You have to work hard in this class to get a good grade, and you can't miss a single class. Other than the amount of work required of you, this class is great and I would highly suggest taking it; Waugh is witty and sarcastic and more than willing to help you out if you go to office hours. :-)

Waugh for this course was interesting. She was a kind professor. She would love it when you went to her office hours. The seminar consisted of reading books about the civil war and then writing a paper once a week about 2-3 pages. Then at the end you would make one big paper with the smaller ones. You had to do an oral presentation and every week be ready to talk about the novels. When you give your opinion sometimes she disagrees and it is awkward, but she brings breakfast sometimes!
Take this course if you want a crash course in the Civil War, she is super knowledgeable!