Colacurcio is the best professor I have ever taken at UCLA. He covers so much material in this class and goes through each text thoroughly. If I could take every single class with this man I would. I went to almost all his office hours and learned about Emerson and Thoreau and how to navigate through their difficult writing. Anything I had difficulty with, it was immediately resolved when asking questions during his office hours or class. His lectures are very interesting, but only if you are actually listening and not zoning out (or else you won't know what he's talking about). The quizzes are mostly take home T/F quizzes that are impossible to do unless you listen in class, so I suggest you take notes and there were two papers and a midterm/final where you identify and analyze passages. He is okay with computers and isn't too strict on tardiness but does take roll every class. Overall, he's a very knowledgable professor and there hasn't been a question that was asked in class/review sessions/ office hours that he couldn't thoroughly answer. If you take this class you should take advantage of how much you can learn from him.

Do NOT take classes with Colacurcio. If you can avoid him, do so. The class might as well be called "Emerson's entire collection." If you're into that, congrats. Colacurcio would probably give Emerson a handy if he could. But if you wanted like other authors??like it's not happening. He assigns other readings but doesn't go into as much detail as he does with the Emerson readings - which are pain in the ass.
His quizzes (Three quizzes with average 80+ True/False questions) are hard as shit. He had to make them take-home bc my class was so bad at them, but he usually gives 15-20 mins to answer them in class. His essay prompts are unclear. His syllabus is unclear as hell, you don't know which reader to use, the readings aren't clearly labeled at all, adn sometimes he would assign readings not in the readers and not tell you. He doesn't use slides so you just have to put up with 2 hours of BS being spewed out of a 80 y/o man's mouth and HOPE you don't space out for the 10 minutes in total of actual material. The final for this class was so hard he actually had to drop some of the portions of the test bc everyone failed. Yeah, he's an easy grader but it's only because he knows after one quarter with him he made you suicidal. And even then, like I'm pretty sure my solid B is one of the higher grades in the class and that's because I had a study group of like six people and none of us knew what was going on. Don't take him. Not worth the "easy A"