I stopped going to lecture after a couple of weeks because I didn't feel like it was really adding much. I'm ngl I even stopped doing the readings. They were long and tedious. You don't really need to have done them to be able to write the papers; you can just take from what you need when making your outline which is what I did. Wasn't a difficult class overall just kind of boring. Professor Terraciano is really nice though and always willing to talk. I would've gotten an A in this class if I didn't have the ta that I had. He grades essays extremely strictly down to word choice. His grading on my essays is what messed up my grade and I've never had a problem with my essay grades before as I'm generally a strong writer. If you have a good ta then it'll be easy to get an a. But if you get shubhanga (he's a really nice person though and gives great feedback in person) either try to switch or get ready to write masters level papers.

Professor Terraciano is one of the best professors you'll ever encounter here at UCLA. There are a total of four reading sources, one of which he will provide for free, and another you can find online for free. You can probably find the other two, but I purchased them. His lectures were mainly of him going over some slides and important sections of the readings. While the lectures weren't mandatory, they were insightful, especially for the midterm and final exam review sheets. There were roughly 100 vocab terms to define for these reviews, but both exams were fairly easy and did not use all the terms. There are also two essays throughout the course, the first one was three pages long, the second one was four pages long. I am unaware about the other TA's, but Abigail Weinberg was very kind and helpful! I attended office hours a few times and she did a really great job at guiding me in the right direction and appointing me to resources (because I am a commuter student). Professor Terraciano is one of the kindest, most wholesome professors. He really does care about you and is happy to listen if you ever need anything. His speech at the end of the last lecture was very touching and I will always remember it! Would definitely recommend taking this course.

I really enjoyed taking 8A with Professor Terraciano. Lectures are not mandatory, but helpful when it comes to contextualizing the readings. Grading was made up of: 10% (discussion) participation, 15% midterm, 40% between 2 papers, 35% final. He definitely cares about his students and wants you to succeed in a course that's very relevant to the cultural heritage of Los Angeles.

TLDR: This class isn't the easiest GE out there, but it could potentially secure you an A if you try hard enough.

I went into this class as a recommendation by someone who said it was easy. The sheer amount of reading told me otherwise. However, it's not that it's hard and difficult to understand, just really tedious.

Some TA's allow for you to submit outlines and really engage with you for the betterment of your paper, but others don't. I had someone who didn't allow for outlines or reading of the entire paper, but was able to push through it by paying attention in discussion sections.

I lowkey fell asleep sometimes in the lectures. I'm not sure if it's common in history classes, but the lectures only talked about the contexts of the readings and units we learned about. For when writing the paper, you will be discussing the readings in depth, not the contexts of when they were written as much.

There is one midterm exam on Canvas open for 24 hours (worth 15%) and one final exam on Canvas open for 24 hours (worth 35%). Both exams are MCQ's. A 10% comes from discussion attendance AND participation. As per papers, the midterm 1 paper is worth 15%, 3 pages worth. The midterm 2 paper is worth 25%, 4 pages worth. There is no final paper, but image analysis and writing is a component of the final exam on Canvas.

Professor Terraciano was nothing short of an amazing ass professor. He was very welcoming and passionate about Latin History, which kept students engaged throughout lecture. Yes, the workload can seem a bit much with all of the readings, but they are all vital for you to be successful in the homework and the course. I'd recommend this class despite the amount of reading, because you will definitely get the value of why this type of history is so essential in the modern ages.

PROF TERRACIANO is incredible. Office hours are so engaging and interesting. Overall one of the most cool, interesting, knowledgeable, calm professor I have interacted with. TAKE HIS CLASS.

terraciano truly cares about this topic and handles it with extreme care :) there's a good amount of readings in the class but he offers weekly guiding questions for each reading that makes digesting the readings easier! as everyone else said sofia yazpik was a very helpful TA

Content was not very difficult but my TA graded very harshly based on her personal writing style preferences which made the class much harder. Class consisted of 2 essays, an essay midterm, and a lengthy final made up of 3 essays.

I definitely recommend taking this class with Professor Terraciano. There were 4 assignments the whole quarter, two essays (first one is worth 15% and second one is worth 25%) aside from the take-home midterm(worth 15% of your final grade) and take-home essay (worth 35% of your final grade) . I recommend Sofia Yazpik as a TA, she made the discussion section very useful and definitely helped to go over the readings. There are a lot of readings assigned but you can get away with not reading everything. For your essays most information you can be guided through the lecture slides which he also posts on BruinLearn after class. There are 4 main books for this class, two are free, and two you have to purchase but they are not expensive. I also feel that you can get away with not purchasing those two books and still doing good in the class. Overall, this is an easy GE.

For anyone looking for a GE that completes a historical analysis and the diversity requirement, I would recommend this course. Professor Terraciano is great and is truly passionate about his field of study. This class consisted of four essays: Essay 1, the midterm, Essay 2, and the final. However, the midterm and final were less formal essays in my opinion, and were more just a response to questions, images, etc. Participation in discussions is also included in the final grade. Although discussion sections are required, you do not need to go to lectures since he records them and uploads them to BruinLearn. Although I went to every lecture I wouldn't say it is entirely necessary especially since the recordings are offered online. Despite this, the last lecture was very helpful for the final and I do not think he uploaded a recording for that lecture.
Besides the essays, the professor assigned weekly readings. I started by reading all of the readings every week but found there were just too many and I ended up not reading them at all. I didn't find the readings to be entirely necessary since we talked about them during discussions and sometimes in lectures. For me, I simply just read for the essay prompt when essays were assigned. Although this may have taken me a bit more time, I thought it was better than reading the entirety of the readings every week.
For this class, the essays are graded by the TA only. Although I do not know much about all of the TAs, Sofia Yazpik was great and incredibly helpful. She was willing to read your thesis and even look at an outline for your essay. I would highly recommend her.
Overall, my experience in this class was pretty positive and if you are looking for a fairly easy GE, take this course.