I cannot stress this enough, by far my favorite professor at UCLA. Professor Branstetter is an awesome lecturer, has super engaging materials, and makes you think about political science from a different perspective. He is also very approachable and accommodating to all of his students!

7 short quizzes, SUPER easy. He drops your two lowest quiz scores. One midterm and final "exam": 8 short answers, 1 essay. The midterm and final are however long you think is appropriate to explain the question. I incorporated a ton of memes and examples in my final exam and got a 100! His class truly is a break from my other classes. It's very fun and insightful!

After four years at UCLA, I can confidently state that Professor Branstetter is the best professor I have ever had at UCLA. He truly has a talent for seamlessly breaking down historical events and relaying important concepts in an easily comprehendible manner. Although I often find learning history or political theory to be relatively dull, Professor Branstetter does an incredible job of making his lectures interesting and keeping his students engaged.
The framework for the class is as follows:
7 short quizzes (2 of the lowest scores are dropped) - I can not emphasize enough how simple and straightforward the quizzes are, if you watch the lectures you will easily get a 100% on all of them
1 midterm and 1 final - both of which essentially require you to regurgitate the information you have learned in your own words; the professor mainly wants to see that you have learned the important concepts and are able to explain them in your own ways
Overall, I would recommend Professor Branstetter and any of his courses to every student at UCLA

Prof. Branstetter is a nice guy, but this is easily the worst class I've taken at UCLA. Disorganized, incomprehensible lectures and the lack of detailed powerpoints makes the dense material even harder to understand.

branstetter is the hardest professor to get, and that just says everything about him. political theory is hard to understand, but branstetter breaks it down in such a way that it feels like you are having such a fun conversation with him. he is so passionate about the readings, and the way he teaches makes you want to be so passionate about them as well. his class was only 2 papers, and they are fun prompts, too. i will say they feel fairly long (4-5 pages SINGLE SPACED), and because it is theory, it can be hard to get the ball rolling. once you do though, you just gotta yap over and over (hence it feeling a bit long). THE BEST PART: you get 100% on both as long as you show you really put thought in the papers. because the prompts are fun, you actually enjoy writing them a bit, so it is nearly impossible to NOT get an A. the point of this, as branstetter puts it, is that grades weigh down on us and so we often worry about writing what the grader wants to hear and not what we really think. so by removing the looming threat of a grade, we get our true thoughts out unrestrictred. it's the best philosophy ever for a prof to have. luv him, wish his classes would stop filling up so fast so i could have a chance to take him every quarter fr.

Absolutely loved this class, easily one of my favorite classes taken here. Branstetter does a great job of making one of the most daunting and challenging books I've ever seen extremely accessible and relatively easy to get. There was (I think?) 7 quizzes that you had from the end of the class to the beginning of the next class to do on that chapter/lecture worth a total of 20%, and a midterm and final each worth 40%. He is extremely helpful if you have any questions about the material. I am not normally a fan of political theory, but he definitely made it worth it.

Professor Branstetter is someone I'd love to sit and talk to at length about political issues for hours or days. He's fascinating and intelligent.

However, he's not a very good teacher.

While I appreciate a philosophy that grades wouldn't matter to the Frankfurt School of thinking - the world we live in isn't that one, so his options in the class of earning an "A+" or "F" (basically everyone gets a participation trophy that shows up), is insulting and inspires laziness and lack of thoughtfulness.

It was a particularly tough quarter, and in this course I knew that I would earn an A+ for minimal effort, so I put my efforts elsewhere that required more focus. I can honestly say that everything I learned in this course came off the syllabus.

I LOVED THIS CLASS!! HE IS AN AMAZING PROFESSOR!!! I WOULD DEF TAKE THIS COURSE AGAIN IF I COULD

There's a reason why Branstetter's classes fill up so quickly. Branstetter is a passionate, light-hearted, and overall very engaging lecturer. He is very academically progressive, understanding the cost of textbooks and the meaninglessness of grades, making for a very unique and easy grading system.

It was a bit writing intensive. There were two 4-5 single spaced papers (~10 page double-spaced papers). Don't let this deter you, however. While the topics were very open (which to some people may make it difficult), I thought the topics were interesting. Furthermore, they are graded on COMPLETION and REVISION. Aka as long as you turn in a relevant 10 page paper you get a B, revise if after a TA leaves comments, and you get an A+. It is ridiculously easy to pass.

There is one complaint I have with him, however. Besides being very academically progressive, he is politically very progressive. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, however, he often makes either subtle or non-subtle remarks against conservative values. One time, he subtly shamed people who don't donate anything to impoverished communities. So, yeah. If you're conservative you may feel uncomfortable unfortunately.

Professor Branstetter is probably one of my favorite professors I have had at UCLA so far. He genuinely cares about his students and stresses the fact that placing such a high importance on grades can create a stressful culture in college, and that he cares more about making sure we engage with the course content and share our honest ideas. If you have the chance to take a class with him, do it! You will not regret it. The class grade was entirely structured around 2 papers (4-5 pages single spaced) on interesting and mostly open ended topics. By submitting your papers you automatically receive a B+, and by making substantial revisions on your papers you receive an A. Also, we got to watch the Barbie movie in class and discuss. Would recommend to anyone!

I took professor Branstetter's Pre-Modern Asian political theory class and although the material itself was engaging, and he was a really awesome lecturer, the exams were not it. There was two exams that he only graded on so you had to make sure to ace them or else your grade was doomed. The readings were also extremely long and challenging, like I kid you not I read most of them and it took me weeks to actually finish them in their entirety. I do like the exams were open note and unlimited tries, but he and his graders take forever to grade them, leaving you with minimal time to actually be able to rewrite them. I somehow got a good grade in the class by simply doing the readings and reviewing the lectures and powerpoint slides, but god the readings made me 1000% stressed.