Do not let the good reviews misguide you. This class is extremely dense and has become much harder recently. The tests are 100% written (short answer, ID, etc). You can get everything right and still do poorly because the professor interprets a vague topic differently. Most people will get C's on the tests and this class is NOT curved. Lectures are not engaging, tiring, and dense. I was excited to learn more about Chinese civilization, but now I just find myself struggling in my other classes because this GE is too demanding. Duthie knows her stuff and does well enough at lecturing it but has way too high of expectations for her students. The class also has many students who grew up learning Chinese history and thus will destroy you. DO NOT TAKE

Very easy class and the professor is also nice, funny, and caring! As long as you attend lecture and get all the notes, do the weekly reading, you're pretty much guaranteed an A-. Final is not cumulative so the class basically has 2 midterms. Studied the night before for both and ended up with an A. Highly recommend Prof. Duthie.

I had to work my butt off for this class. There were so many readings. They were so brutally long. There was so much information you had to know and remember. We went through so much. Her lectures were so boring but so useful. She doesn't post up the slides, so you better type everything down and everything she says. The discussions were required. You had to do a week facilitation for a week where you basically discuss with the class about a reading. You also had to post an answer to a question on CCLE. There were no essays. However, the midterm and final were sort of difficult. They're all short answer. You had to identify passages and pictures and terms and people. It was terrible. You had to know the century, authors, whatever. But there is partial credit. I had to study really hard. Write down everything you can think of about it. I hated this class so much. I do not recommend.

Professor Duthie was great. She seemed really nice and passionate about the subject. Her class was relatively easy although we did cover a lot of material. There's no essays, and the tests were straightforward. She even offered extra credit on the final. We also typically finished early most lectures. Overall, this was a solid GE.

I really hoped to enjoy this class more than I did with Professor Duthie. She is obviously very knowledgable and passionate about the material, but she did very little to make the class lectures interesting or engaging—she just showed slides (for so little time you can't get all the info) and more or less reads from them. She also didn't give us the slides, which made studying considerably more difficult.
Overall I felt like this class would have been a lot better if I were actually taking this as a major requirement; this class expected a lot more from the students than the average GE and in the end left me uninterested and unmotivated about the material.

The textbook is honestly terribly written. The sourcebook is thankfully a little better, and it's what you need for the weekly discussion posts. But when it comes to studying for exams, you only have your (hastily written) notes and the textbook, which really will not be that helpful.
I know this is usually considered an easy GE, but that is most definitely not the case with Professor Duthie.
She and the TAs are incredibly excited about the material, and they expect you to share that level of excitement (or you're going to have a bad time.)