By far my favorite class I've taken throughout the entire year. Prof Kelley delivers his lectures in a manner where you usually have to pay attention because certain comments or opinions are not necessarily reflected on the PPT (as expected). Information and generally-hard concepts are presented in a super digestible manner. This class has a flight resonance with economic theory (you do not need prior knowledge whatsoever) and is extremely relevant to the current political state of our world. This class behaves as an exposé of everything-political from big corporations to major political figures. Super eye-opening, no final just a take-home essay, no homework only 3 assignments for the entire quarter and an appreciation for students that participate during discussions. My TA was Annie Powers, amazing teacher and super friendly!

I loved taking this class. Professor Kelley is sharp, funny, and super caring for all of his students. The content is an important, insightful, and engaging look at modern history of neoliberalism, and never felt dull despite my not being a huge lover of history. There were two papers (graded fairly easily) and a group project that is really not that much work if all group members do their fair share. I would take this type of class for all of my GEs if i could.

This class was awesome if you’re interested in history. The lectures were really interesting but also bruincasted which was helpful as they were at 9:30am. The general format of the class was a midterm paper, a final project with your entire section, and a final paper which was made into a group paper for our class. Your ta is going to be grading your papers so make sure you know what they’re looking for. A lot of this class is centered around group work, which I enjoyed, but if that’s not your thing this class might not be for you. There’s a lot of reading, but you definitely don’t need to do it all and you can easily get by without skimming (in fact I recommend it). Overall this class is great and graded leniently. If you are interested in the topic, you should def take this class.

I really enjoyed this class and learned so much about the injustices of capitalism and neoliberalism from professor Kelley! He gave really good lectures and while there was a lot of reading, it was overall a great class! I also had Henry Yang as my TA and he’s great.

While we had a ton of reading, we never had any tests or quizzes lol just a 6-7 page midterm essay, a 5-6 page group final essay (had to co-write it with like 4 people from my discussion), and a final website the entire discussion section worked on together. The material was super interesting too, and I feel like I learned a lot from this class! I took it as a part of my major, but this is a good ge class too if you want credit! Overall I really enjoyed my experience in it

25% midterm essay
25% final group essay
25% discussion section participation
25% final group project

If I had to take a shot every time Robin said the word “capitalism,” I’d be hammered by the 10 minute mark. It really felt like Robin, a self-described “Marxist surrealist feminist who is not just anti something but pro-emancipation, pro-liberation,” tried using this class to tell students that capitalism is to blame for everything wrong in the world. He argued that communal societies, such as Native American societies pre-colonization, were basically heaven on earth. Although we would all be equal in communal societies, he fails to realize that we would all be equally poor! He also doesn’t understand that forcing people to work for “the betterment of society” (working for nothing) kills the drive to innovate and is a form of slavery itself.

The only thing I’m going to say is that the readings he assigned us mostly came from marxists.org.

Do whatever you want with this information.

I absolutely love Professor Kelley; he's the most engaging lecturer I've ever had. He is very radical and makes very very bold claims to grab attention, and then explains them. Very intriguing, very cool guy. The lectures for this class are an hour and fifteen minutes, and normally I get a little bored, but never during Prof Kelley's lectures. I plan on trying to take all his other classes even if they don't help me with any necessary credit. He doesn't just read off of slides, answers all questions warmly and in depth, and is overall just super cool.
This class is decently easy as long as you do the readings and attend lecture. After week 8 it's really easy because you're done with all the big assignments (besides the final). Weekly readings can be a little overwhelming but you can skim the long ones. Make sure to at least read a few because you have to use them for the final. My TA graded really easily and said all TAs have to go to norming sessions so I assume everyone was graded easily. I would recommend this class just for Prof Kelley!!

Robin could improve a lot on helping me learn effectively. Due to a pre-existing health condition, I could not go to class in person. After going back to in-person, the lectures only recorded the audio, not the slide show. Although he provided the slide show, it was very hard to follow along. I eventually gave up listening to lectures because they were not helpful.
The grade is based on two things and two things only: one midterm essay and one group project. Each was worth fifty percent of the grade. If I needed to do the final essay, each part would be worth 33.3 percent of the grade. The essay question was thought provoking, but the grading was wildly inconsistent and seemingly arbitrary. In other words, it seemed like students earned their essay grade based on the mood of the TA, the person grading the essays. However, the group project is a completely different story. It was so much worse! The group project consisted of seven members that Robin randomly assigned. There was no clear rubric for the group project, so it seemed very open ended. Robin even said that the group project would only help, not harm, everyone's grade. Well, this was a blatant lie! Since there was no clear rubric, we turned in a pamphlet, something recommended on the syllabus. According to google, a pamphlet is usually only a page, front and back. However, he said my group's project was "thin" and gave us a B+! Thankfully my midterm essay was good enough so that I do not have to write the final, but still! Please provide a clear rubric if you are going to be so critical.
The professor was not accommodating in any way. Just no, no way in hell. He was FORCED to be flexible during the beginning of the quarter because everything was online. However, his decision to go back in person, along with recording the lectures in such a poor way, made me feel like I was being punished. I would either have to risk my health and possibly my life to attend class, or just rely on poor audio recordings. He tried blaming this on the room's technology for only allowing audio recordings. But come on, that excuse will not work on me! He could have been more forceful about choosing a different room with better technology. If this did not work, he could have continued lecturing online. But obviously he did not care enough to do this. So sad.
He did put students in groups for the group project, but half the group did nothing at all. I am not a snitch, so I will not say which group I am in. However, I will say I contributed more than I should have. He removed the participation grade from the grading rubric, something I really do not understand why. He should have left it because half the students in my group did nothing! According to the TA, if we report a group member for doing nothing, that team member's grade would be lowered. But what about the remaining students in the group! Nothing! We made a "thin" project ("thin" is from Robin) because half the members did nothing. Were we supposed to do just as much as groups with seven contributing members? So damn infuriating.
I would never take a class with Robin ever again. Everything seems so arbitrary and performance in this class is only based on the personalities of the TA that grades the essays and the group members who work on the group project. My traumatic experience in this class is even making me hesitant to take another history class at UCLA. Before this class, I was seriously considering getting a minor in history.
I did not really care for this TA. I have had better. In my opinion, Rory's saving grace is that she is a very slow grader. It took Rory around a month to finish grading everyone's midterm. Everyone turned in the essay around week 6 and everyone got it back around week 10. Ridiculous, am I right? However, this was actually a good thing because I am pretty sure Rory's grading habits made the final essay optional. This totally saved me because I stopped reading the required texts and going to lectures after the first midterm. I would have done so poorly if I had to write the final essay, but now I got an A. I have to thank God for this. It was truly a miracle. God is good. God is great. Amen!

This was a challenging yet interesting and engaging class. This was my first quarter at UCLA so writing the essays was a little stressful but my TA was really helpful and the grading wasn't too strict. All the lectures were really interesting and you could tell that the professor was very passionate about the topics he was teaching. There was quite a lot of readings assigned, as to be expected from a history class. You can probably get away with not doing the readings if you're knowledgeable on the topic but I recommend at least skimming the readings. We were supposed to have 2 individual essays and a group project (which consisted of making a website), but since the prof is super into group work he made 2 group projects and 1 essay. Overall it was a pretty good class so I would recommend it to anyone who's looking for a decent GE.

This class was super easy and the Professor is very nice about rounding grades. There aren't any tests so your grade is pretty much made up of the two essays that you write. I had no interest in the topic of this class so it was hard for me to pay attention and write the papers, but it was worth the A. I also did not like how the Professor and my TA would constantly bring up their political and personal beliefs during class- very unprofessional.