I liked the class.; pretty easy all around and a good amount of reading like any other history class. I honestly don't know why so many people on here have a problem with her. Maybe she has changed since then but I felt like she really knew what she was talking about and other than the first day, she never really got side track. She always stayed on track with what she was talking about and was very passionate which made the class enjoyable. Overall easy class I would say. For the readings only do the necessary amount to participate in discussion since it's about 20% of your grade. It's 2 essays, a final, a map quiz and discussion. Overall, a large portion of your grade is based on the essays so as long as effort is put into that, it should be fairly easy. Got an A in the class

Derby is passionate and well-intentioned, but overall a very poor professor. Unfortunately, Derby's love for Latin America and the Caribbean does not translate into anything comprehensible in lecture- her lectures are random and extremely unorganized, often with Powerpoints of only keyterms and a picture or two. Fortunately, TA's are understanding of Derby's terrible lecture skills and really help the students to understand the material, which spans many countries and several hundred years. An interest in Latin America before Hist. 8C helped me to get through the class, but others were not as fortunate. The class consists of three essays (two for the midterm), which are all doable, and one broad final on the hundreds of keyterms throughout the quarter. Not the worst class I've taken, but certainly not the best.

Class was easy, but I agree that lectures and the grading scheme are so extremely disorganized. The professor is extremely knowledgeable and passionate about the subject matter though which is good. Despite the confusion, it wasn't really stressful to take this class since the grading is very lenient and there's low actual expectations of students I feel like. The readings are incredibly long (imho but I'm a south campus major so what do I know) but if you just read 20 pages of it, you can contribute meaningfully to discussion and that'll honestly be more than 80% of the reading your peers actually do. I feel like lectures are supposed to reduce the friction of learning the material and that just wasn't the case for this class.

Class is easy, but she is absolutely retarded. Your grade will depend on your TA. I got an A and avoided her awful lectures like the plague, but my buddy had a cool TA who basically gave them the questions that were going to be on the final. It's not a hard class, she just doesn't know what she's doing, so if you like having notes that mean something, stay away. The reading is boring as shit too.