I love Professor Berry! He is such an interesting professor that I would like to attend his class although attendance is not required in his class! He graded friendly and also brought us fun topics to the class! I would say that it is a pretty easy A class because he is so generous with our scores and we only have 3 essays as homework in the whole quarter (In addition to each preview of discussion, but that is very little work)!

I feel like this class is an easy GE if you follow lectures (pre recorded or in person) and show up to discussions. I personally didn't love the content too much because it was heavily based on history but for someone who enjoys that, they may like this class. A lot of lectures were guest speakers and others were pretty well explained, but overall a little boring (again, could be just me). I don't think the workload is that bad, there are 3 writing assignments (3 pages each), one weekly response about the material and the rest is just about showing up to discussion. However, for someone who thought this would be about pop culture, it really misled me because I was thinking of more modern things which we tend to enjoy now. Probably wouldn't have taken the class if I had known about the content but nothing bad to say about the prof himself. He's clearly very passionate about the topics he teaches.

The class entailed two writing assignments, one final paper, and one final. The actual workload of the class was light, but Professor Berry did assign us to read many films and books to discuss in lecture and in discussion. Of course, no one checked if you actually read them but if no one reads/watches them, it leads to really awkward silences so it's good to try and read at least parts of the recommended readings (also helpful for the final).

Overall though, Professor Berry is a super knowledgeable and engaging lecturer. He really cares about the course, and invited many respected guests to the lectures to speak with us. The content of the course is also interesting (unlike other GE's I've taken).

I'd definitely recommend this class with Berry for its content, workload, and value.

If you are interested or have some knowledge in modern Chinese society, this is probably one of the easiest geneds.