This class is a must take! Professor Kligman is highly engaging and is super passionate about Jewish music. The workload was quite manageable, with 3 small listening papers (650 words), 1 midterm paper (1200 words), and 1 final paper (2000 words). These papers are graded very leniently and you also get good critiques on your writing that can help you improve. As long as you do all the assignments and attend class, it will be easy to get an A. Professor Kligman is also highly approachable during office hours and you will walk out with a greater appreciation for Jewish music. This class is amazing and I would highly recommend it.

Great class! If you're looking for a pretty easy A, this is the class for you. Professor Kligman is an extremely engaging lecturer, often personalizing lectures by discussing his own upbringing and life story in relation to the topics at hand. This may be because our class was small, but he also often asked the class for thoughts on the music we listened to in class, making the lectures extremely engaging. At times you may be flooded with lots of information in lecture, so I would recommend taking notes. However, at least for me, there were no exams but rather essays to write for evaluation. Therefore, the class did not rely on memorizing facts but rather having a general sense of the qualities that define certain types of music and the historical context in which that music was created.

Having some sort of Jewish background provides some helpful context, but it is, as far as I'm concerned, by no means necessary to succeed in the class.

Now, to the nuts and bolts of the class: evaluation. The only assignments I received were essays. I don't want to reveal the subject matter for fear of breaking any sort of academic integrity rules, but except for one essay about a subject of our choosing, we wrote about music covered in class. Additionally, our TA (Danielle Stein) was super helpful in discussion about organizing the essay and teaching us what to look for in the music. Furthermore, she grades super fairly (Frankly, I don't feel like I deserve the good grades she gave me, so if you're looking for a chill class with a chill TA, CHOOSE THIS ONE.).

In short, this class was extremely interesting and not horribly difficult, and a highly recommend it to anyone trying to get rid of a GE requirement, boost their GPA, and/or update their playlist.