Overall, this class is a great and straightforward Writing II + GE class to take. It was fully asynchronous for this quarter, with there being weekly lectures, readings, one page activity journals (basically writing reflections), and TA videos. It was interesting to look at the ancient world in a different perspective as well. There is only one full paper and the way planning elements of it are due make it not too stressful to complete.
Your grade is made up of the following:
Participation 20% : Watching all the videos, peer reviewing for final paper, two mandatory TA meetings
Activity Journals 20%
Mann Synthesis Assignment: basically a summary/reflection of this paper which you will constantly refer to 10%
Research Paper/Podcast 45%: You can either write a 10-12 page research paper or record a podcast for the final project. 5% Thesis/Annotated Bibliography, 10% Rough Draft, 30% Rough Draft
Final Presentation/Podcast Audio 5%: basically a verbal summary of research paper (5-7 min) or something else if you did podcast.

Pretty easy writing 2. I suck at writing but was able to scrape by with an A. Most of your grade relies on your research paper so if you’re good at doing research it isn’t that bad. I did mine on women in Ancient Hawaii because I thought Hawaii was interesting. Really recommend doing your paper on something interesting so it’s more bearable!

This is a much easier writing II class than a lot out there, I'd recommend taking especially if you're interested in the subject as a whole. Depending on your TA, this could be very easy, especially if you ask for feedback on your activity journals. Fs my favorite summer class, would take again :)

I agree with some of the Fall 2021 reviews, as this class was relatively interesting and truly is about what the class entails, women and power in the ancient world. Professor Cooney's lectures were engaging and you can tell how passionate she was about the topic, but besides that, this is mainly a review of the structure of the class since this is what a lot of people want. There is a LARGE AMOUNT of writing to be done in this class because it is a writing II and a GE requirement. The material isn't hard to grasp but the work itself is very tedious sometimes. There are weekly activity journals (with a prompt) that you'd have to look at the readings and lecture to answer + other participation (40%), a 3-4 page Mann synthesis paper (10%), final 10-12 page research paper/podcast script (45%), and a final presentation (5%). It is a lot I will not lie, but it's split into the quarter fairly well, especially since the course is all online-asynchronous(for the in-person discussion I think they had discussion participation instead of writing activity journals). The prompts were very open-ended but it made it sort of hard to formulate some form of ideas and even tell if your ideas are valid... but your TA is the main source of support and also your grade as well. The stressful part was mainly just the final paper because of the page requirement and how much of your grade it determined, but your TA gives you feed back on your rough draft for you to improve your grade. So yes, this course is heavily reliant on your TA. Thus, this class was exhausting I won't lie but I can definitely say I learned a lot from the course... but I would not really go out of my way to take it out of interest simply because of the amount of work that there was to do!

Professor Cooney has been such a pleasure to be taught by. She is the definition of a boss woman and always manages to make lectures so engaging...and not just interesting, like a literal TV show. I absolutely adore this course despite the fact that there is a MASSIVE workload of readings and discussions and etc.

This class is amazing if you want to learn about what women power entails in a society. All the material is intriguing to read. However, this class is quite tedious. We have to write a 1-page essay every week that is based on the week's readings. The readings can be short or super long which can take up to hours to read. Professor Cooney is super cool.

This class was absolutely spectacular. It fulfills three GE's (Historical Analysis, Diversity, and Writing II) and the professor is so inspiring and interesting to listen to. The class was built around having weekly readings and lectures that cumulated in a one-page Activity Journal at the end of the week. The readings and lectures were awesome and super helpful and could often be skimmed. The lectures and videos took maybe two hours to knockout with the most readings and lectures at the beginning of the class. Then, every week a one-page activity Journal was due based on what you learned that week. Super easy. There was only ever one super hard reading but the TA spent a lot of time making sure we understood. There were only ever two real "tests" in the form of essays and neither was particularly difficult. The lecture videos are wonderfully produced and extremely engaging and the workload is so minor that most of the class would finish the week's work in a day (though I don't recommend that lol) Overall, I will highly, highly recommend this class.