TL;DR: I recommend this class as an easy upper div. Professor Corey is SUPER funny and has really engaging lectures. No assignments other than the final, which is a combined midterm and final (3-4 pages for each one). Only drawback is she goes on tangents during her lectures, but the material is not hard to understand. She CAN come across as rude, but to be fair she is quite old and from a different era. This was the first class I took at UCLA after transferring, and it was quite the introduction!

Long review:

Syllabus/assignments:
There are no assignments other than the combined midterm and final. Each essay is 3-4 pages long. She gives you a lot of prompts to choose from, and you only have to pick one for each essay. She does NOT care about format at all. For most prompts, you must draw from information from the lectures, books, and films

The only readings are two books: The Bread Givers and Only Yesterday. I did not read a single page of Only Yesterday and only read The Bread Givers. You can get away with only reading one as long as you pick a prompt that has to do with the book you read, but you should read at least one. There are no textbooks or articles to read.

There were also 2 films (maybe 3? but probably 2) that you had to watch. Not too bad and you can just put them on 2x speed. One was The Italian, and I don't remember the other.

Her criteria for the essay was mostly just "to prove you took the class." If you go to her office hours, she will personally grade your paper herself as opposed to the TA/assistant grading it. While this might seem intimidating or somehow worse, I believe she is a very easy grader because my essay was not good at all and she still gave me an A. However, she does not provide any feedback. You basically email your essay to her because she hates Canvas, and you won't even know if she received it because she does not email you anything back. I did not even know if she received it for a whole month until I checked my unofficial transcript and saw I got an A in the class.

To get a good grade though, make sure to align your argument in your essay with how she presents her opinion on a certain topic in the lectures. She has very OBVIOUS opinions on parts of American history which she makes VERY clear in her office hours and lectures. I would not recommend writing your essay AGAINST her perspective of that topic. And if I had to leave you with one piece of advice to get a good grade, GO TO OFFICE HOURS!

She gives a ton of choices for the prompts and they are very straightforward. The lectures are very informative, so I felt that I had sufficient information to go off of. You actually might not even have to watch any of the lectures until the prompts are posted, pick a prompt, and just watch the lecture for that topic. Although, I did watch all the lectures simply because they were fun to watch.

Lecture style:
She is super funny, engaging, and has incredible wit. In my opinion, she explains topics in a simple manner and I don't think anything was hard to understand. However, like many other reviews note, she birdwalks quite frequently and goes on tangents about random historical figures who you probably won't know and are irrelevant to the class or final essay. She will also go off on random side tangents in general. Her slides are also 99% pictures, but she gets confused on the order of her own slideshows and jumps around from one slide to another -- so they can be quite disorganized (bare in mind she is quite old). It can be a bit annoying as a student, but I honestly I did not care that much. Her lectures, when she's on track, are really engaging. Sometimes she is not completely clear, but overall the topics themselves were not dense or complicated at all. Again, this was my very first course at UCLA, so when I say it was not dense—it really wasn't. Trust when I say I am NOT an academic weapon.

Communication:
She responded to all my emails within 24 hours, and answered my questions pretty well. If she had updates or announcements, she was also pretty communicative on Canvas. Although, she types in all caps and without proper punctuation, but it gave me a good laugh.

Office hours:
She makes herself pretty available and lets you set up private appointments with her in case you cannot make the regular hours.
HOWEVER: She is a bit...interesting. You will ask her one, short and straightforward question and she will go on a 20 minute coke rant with maybe 2-3 sentences that actually answer your question. This happened to me and everyone else in the office hours appointments I went to. She might answer you in a pretty rude manner, but you MUST hold back your tears and prevail. She mostly values the fact that, in her words, "give a shit" enough to get help and come to the office hours. Just prepare 1 question about the lectures, readings, or your essay and shut up and nod for the rest of her coke rant. I only went to two office hours and she still gave me an A. Don't get offended if she seems to treat you like you asked the dumbest question in human history—again, just hold back the tears. It's okay. Also, she will be pretty pleased if you say something that proves you watched her lectures.

She would get pretty visibly and verbally frustrated when someone would ask her a technical question about the final as opposed to an academic one, so DON'T do that. I kind of understand her frustration though because she reiterates it 20 times and it's written in the syllabus. But overall her office hours were pretty interesting.

Conclusion:

Overall, I would highly recommend taking this class if you want an easy upper div. Yes, there is probably something wrong with her and godspeed to any retail worker that has to deal with her, but she gave me an A so I really don't care at this point. Her lectures are hilarious and I honestly enjoyed this course! If you like American history and funny, unique professors I highly recommend this course.

As a transfer, this was my first course at UCLA. I couldn’t recommend taking it more! Professor Corey was great. This was an asynchronous course. You were only graded on the midterm and final exams, which were essays that she combined into one. She provided the questions for the two essays, and you could pick whichever two seemed easiest. This course was easy, and I’d recommend it for any major.

Professor Corey is a very engaging and entertaining lecturer. I took her online over the summer and while the lectures were pre-recorded videos, they were nonetheless highly informative and very interesting. She has a sharp and witty sense of humor that informs her lecturing style, and often makes connections to contemporary political, cultural, and artistic topics when covering history. The only assignments were a midterm and final (combined as one, since it was summer), but going to office hours can help you further understand the content and helps to make your engagement in the course known. I highly recommend!

Really enjoyed taking Corey's class. Do go visit her during office hours as she is very helpful and excited to teach, helping guide on the papers.

Midterm and final take home essays, consisting of 8 pages each. Overall, this class is fairly easy, although it may vary depending on the strictness of your TA. Corey is funny and charming in her own sort of way, but personally I found her lectures didn't give me much useful information. Lectures felt a bit disorganized, and she would repeat the same information often. Most of the learning comes from the readings, so it's really no big deal to skip on lectures from time to time. Not the most interesting class ever, but absolutely doable, and by no means terrible.

I took a corey class over the summer and I'd say it was one of the best classes i've taken at UCLA; and I've been here for a while. Corey has a fresh sense of humor and does go into very interesting tangents. If you want to get to know her and learn more about current day issues go to office hours.

Office hours for her isn't a time when you come to whine about how to write a thesis statement. Rather, you come to office hours to discuss topics you find interesting in general. This can range from the readings to anything in life in general.

If Corey seems stressed at times it's only because she's had to deal with silly questions from kids who wear wife beaters everyday and regularaly announce that they've worked on film sets before (as though anyone cares, cmon guy, you know who you are.)

Ironic as it may sound, if you care more about the knowledge of history than your grade, you will probably receive an A.

Corey is awesome. Yes, she might be rude at times, but which professor at UCLA isn't. She is an entertaining lecturer and loves what she teaches. Her midterm and final are completely straightforward. Highly recommend if you are a History major or need a G.E. or just feel like learning about U.S. History.

To the person below:
You also took her 191 which is a wayyyy smaller class compared to the 140A.

First and foremost...she IS RACIST...she was dropping the N-word in lecture like no other History professor I have had. In office hours (I am White mind you) I did notice she played favoritism to Whites and did not give 100% to all other students. Plain and simple she is racist...the charges levied against her about being racist do have merit.

She is really good at telling stories, keeping you awake in lecture, and really engaging. She is a tough grader if you have her look at your papers...I got a A-...so I am happy.

Despite what you may have heard, she is not an easy grader; but she is an excellent professor and never boring.