The class is made up of bi-weekly commentary on the weekly assigned readings, one midterm paper, and a final exam. Throughout the ten weeks of the course, he will conduct 2 pop quizzes, both of which were very easy (I got 100% on both).

Professor Lemelson was engaging throughout most of his lectures. His slides were very straightforward and helpful. The content is pretty interesting if you want to learn more about developing countries, and their cultures through deeper levels. He went to some of the countries and actually presents a lot of his own research in class which is cool. He showed a lot of documentaries in class. The weekly readings are really interesting and very useful. The midterm paper focused on one of the readings, and the final exam was all multiple-choice and completely straightforward. He shared a study guide with the class to help us which was thoughtful.

I would definitely recommend this class if you want an "easy" GE. It is not too much work if you stay somewhat on top of the readings and pay attention in the lecture. It's a great class overall.

Prof Lemelson was super nice and was very well informed on the content (he has decades of field/academic experience under his belt). He gave us a lot of anthro content that he actually produced, including films he made that were very interesting as well as some writing he did. This class taps into a lot of ethics in anthro while covering certain topics just because they are so multifaceted.
- the reading is a bit dense and there is a lot of it. i did most of them bc he gives pop quizzes and it's good to know big themes/events from the readings to do well. Your TA should cover the readings and main ideas.
- you have to do a presentation during discussion section with a partner on the readings/theme for one of the weeks. it's chill as long as your TA is chill (mine was)
- you have one midterm paper and then one final cumulative test (he made the test as straight forward as possible because he doesn't even like giving tests. He says that he just needs some manageable way to test the knowledge of the hundreds of students in his class) (he provides a detailed study guide).
- you have bi-weekly commentaries which are somewhat relaxed writings about the movies and readings/theme you work with those weeks. You are given several prompts and pick the one you want to answer (you only address works from one of the weeks, NOT 2 weeks worth of readings/movies). It is very doable and engaging.

Overall Lemelson is nice and very helpful. He's very open to questions and his lectures were for the most part interesting. Some of the readings and content can be boring but I think the class as a whole is worth it for a GE in comparison to others.

This class was fairly easy if you put in some effort. Professor Lemelson is obviously knowledgeable about the subject; he records and writes a lot of the material for the class himself. The class was mostly centered around Indonesian/javanese culture. The topics of the class were really interesting. Professor did two pop quizzes throughout the quarter to ensure attendance, but they were really easy mcq's, if you have even basic knowledge about the class. The final did require a little bit of studying, but a study guide was provided with all the important information. Final was also MCQ. Any topic that I didn't understand was clarified by the TA and the professor. Would take this class again.

Overall this was an enjoyable class. I feel the one negative thing I have to say is there is A LOT of reading but in most cases you can just skim it (although to be fair I feel the readings Lemelson selected were interesting so at least there's that). The main factor that led me to enjoy this class was the ethnographic films that you watch during about 1/3 of the lectures. The majority of them were actually made by Lemelson who is lowkey a big shot ethnographic film maker, like seriously look him up on google he has a profile and everything. Most of the films center around Indonesian culture which I found to be very interesting. There is a reasonable amount of writing in this class and the final was all multiple choice and did require a decent amount of studying. I took this during the TA strike so I'm not sure if that is the normal final format.