Selling all the required books for this class. Text me **********

Profesor Cooney is one of the most engaging lecturers and the course content is so interesting!! However I bought all the books and didn’t crack open a single one all quarter long. I really thought it would come back to bite me and it totally didn’t. Going to lectures and engaging in discussions are the best way to prepare. Cooney got rid of the midterm and gave the option to do a 10 minute paper or a 10 minute podcast. I picked the podcast which turned out to essentially be an entire paper plus recording/sound editing/mixing and while it was rewarding it was very time consuming. Stick to the paper if you just want to be in and out.

This class gave me anxiety. Your grade is completely dependent on your TA. My TA, Vera, was nice, but disorganized and took forever to respond to emails. She also incorrectly reported our grades as all F's and I'm still trying to get the Dean's honor list notation on my transcript from this quarter. Research paper was kinda hard. Discussion boards are a must.

Grading is handled by the T.A.s and for the reason that TAs often change, my review is mostly for Professor Cooney. Her lectures were interesting, although she unnecessarily injects her own political views into the discussion. This is a bit hypocritical, for when students asked about whether or not ancient Egyptians were 'black' or darker toned skin, she told us to stop "obsessing" about these types of issues and projecting our own ideas of 21st century race relations onto the ancient past. True, but she should also do the same.
What really disappointed me about Cooney was our after-class discussion. I approached her with questions about other Egyptologist's, like John Anthony West. She was very closed minded about new findings & research. She even told me to rely on wikipedia rather than on books I mentioned regarding these topics. When I told her wikipedia is unreliable for anything other then hard facts/general reference, due to biased/anonymous editing, she scoffed at me. I thought professors, esp. those at UCLA, would have better suggestions for research than wikipedia? What we had discussed must have angered her, because over the weekend, she had added a slide to the following class lecture. I know she added it because it had nothing to do with the day's subject, instead it had a photo regarding a topic I had mentioned to her. Specifically, it was a picture of a book, alongside a picture of a UFO. I could not believe how petty this was! The book doesnt mention anything about aliens, it was about dating the pyramids as older then 2000BCE, and written by a geologist. If she took the time to skim through its contents she would have known this. But instead, she tried to humiliate me in front of the class by associating new research to unrelated alien theories in order to defend her own dogmas. Not ok and very unprofessional. She is not a supportive professor, and if you disagree with her, she will use her status to try and demean you. Beware.

It was a pretty easy class overall. There's assigned videos and readings for each week, but you can get away with not reading them. Participation is pretty important, but as long as you say something once every two weeks, answer the weekly discussion question, and go to the 2 mandatory meetings with the prof, it should be alright. Final was a 10 page paper, and it was graded pretty harshly in my opinion. Recommend to take it if you want a fairly easy ge.

I'm writing this review around Week 9 so I don't have a grade yet, but I will update it when I get one. I wanted to point out something that I didn't see in her other reviews: Cooney straight up isn't educated about a lot of the subject material she's speaking on. She brings a lot of scientifically unsubstantiated and frankly misogynistic ideas into the course. She'll say "science shows" and then fail to provide actual scientific sources. Coming from a research background, it is also genuinely painful to see her misinterpreting the neuroscience studies that she posts.
Cooney is also not receptive to feedback—as others have pointed out, she will not listen to people who offer constructive feedback, even if it's worded in the most polite and concessive way possible. Her attitude is a bit bizarre. She always wants to challenge students that ask her questions even if it means deliberately misunderstanding them.
The one positive point to the class is that there is no midterm and final anymore, as you may see in earlier reviews, so the readings are even less important. However, the paper is super heavily weighted and there are some weird grading things. Assignments that are worth 10% of your grade are 10 points, 15% of your grade are 15 points, etc. so if you get a 9/10 on one assignment you've lost 1% of your grade. It's pretty harsh.

I'm not sure when it was changed, but this class is an online format, which I love because it saved me a lot of time going to and from campus. Each week, there are a couple lecture videos posted on CCLE that you have to watch (the average watch time is 1-2.5 hours). However, I always watched during meals on 2x speed so it really saved me a lot of time. The readings are kind of heavy but you just have to find time to do it before your discussion section. Also, your TA will post discussion questions for the week that you should look over before your discussion section (participation is a big part of your grade). The workload isn't too bad honestly. There are three assignments: video or podcast (20%), digital museum exhibit (30%), and final reflection paper (5%). The video was not too bad - you interview a female and try tie in what you've been talking about in class about Michael Mann's IEMP powers to someone's real life experiences and analyze that in a video. The digital museum exhibit is a lot more work because you have an individual portion and a group portion. The invidual portion is researching about a female ruler in the ancient times and finding three artifacts that represent her. The group portion is that you all have rulers in vaguely the same region and you write an essay about them (regions like Egypt, China, Greece, Mesopotamia, India). I would say to utilize TA office hours before you turn in the big assignments to check them over and make sure you did not miss anything. Also, the one quart meeting with Professor Cooney is pretty entertaining, I would recommend going. I agree with the sentiment of many other students: she does not really listen or understand your question, but rather goes on a rant (kinda), and when you get frustrated that she's not answering your questions, it's like she is like "don't worry, I know you'd get angry. But that's what I want you to do and that's how you can make change in the world"?? I'm not sure what's going on with her logic but she just blatantly does not understand students' questions so if you do ask her a question, don't take her response to heart. It sounds she's gone through some things in life so she just gives off a bitter vibe of "nothing phases me anymore" and "you women think you're making progress but you're actually not". It was kind of disheartening to hear honestly. Anyways, you don't have much interaction with her besides watching her lecture videos. I think your experience in the course is very much guided by who your TA is.

The problem with this class is that it is mechanized in such a way that forces you to hold a certain view about women in power both in ancient and modern times. The assignments given literally ask you to explain how women are oppressed, offering no insight to the success stories of women over generations. I actually enjoyed learning about Ancient history, but I did not appreciate AT ALL the revolting bias that polluted her lectures.

Aside from this demeaning factor, Kara is a very clear explainer and a very organized teacher. Each assignment has an explicit rubric and I never really felt lost in the class. I took this course online , so I was able to put her lecture videos on 2x speed (she's incredibly slow at talking). In her videos, she often goes over the assigned readings for the week, so I never even touched one of the readings and yet was still able to participate in the discussions, citing the material and everything.

When I took the course, the grade breakdown was essentially 30% participation (just make sure you speak a lot at every group discussion, citing the lecture videos and all that), 20% for assignment 1 (video/podcast), 30% for assignment 2 (group project, online museum exhibit), 5% for assignment 3 (class reflection). The last 15% was the final, in which we just chose 4 discussion questions from the quarter, so I basically finished my final before it was even released.

Honestly, for this course, getting a good grade depends on your TA. The TA essentially drives the whole course experience for you. I had Anatolii Tokmantcev. He's incredibly smart and on top of his stuff, but he's the PICKIEST grader. I had a zoom meeting with him in which I asked him why I lost points on certain assignments, and he was clearly looking for the most nitty gritty things to take points off. So if you have him, just email him before each assignment is due and ask what he's EXACTLY looking for.

Great class! Very interesting, it was all online. The assignments: a podcast, a digital museum exhibit, and a reflection paper were all very doable. I absolutely loved my TA, Amr. He was so helpful and gave a lot of insight to the assignments. I loved the anecdotes he told me about his experiences excavating in various countries. He was very kind and always had a smile on his face. 10/10 recommend this class with Amr as your TA!

I took the online version, and have mixed views of this class. I’d say it’s rather easy to do if you’re walking in with some context, and are taking this class for your major. But gosh, if you’re taking this as a GE you’re going to walk out with some heavy misperceptions.

As many have said, this professor is not entirely knowledgeable on all she covers and it seems like she only wants to talk about Ancient Egypt, since it’s her field of study. Everything outside of that felt brief and confusing, and not as all-encompassing as one would hope for “Women in Ancient Power.” A lot of things are over sensationalized and frankly some not-very-academic commentary and interpretations comprise about half of all lectures. If you’re looking for something entertaining, it might be nice. But for me personally, the broad and sensationalized material (with a severe lack of grounding) was not what I had hoped for when taking this class for my major. The papers are very specific and really, the majority of what you learn with be from independent research and from your TA. Your TA will make or break your experience.

TLDR; expect to be buddies with JSTOR and maintain a critical lens with the lecture videos.