Professor

Saloni Mathur

AD
4.4
Overall Ratings
Based on 74 Users
Easiness 3.6 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Workload 3.4 / 5 How light the workload is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Clarity 4.4 / 5 How clear the professor is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Helpfulness 4.5 / 5 How helpful the professor is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

Reviews (74)

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ART HIS 25
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
March 24, 2022
Quarter: Winter 2022
Grade: A

I wish to write this review to help future generation studets who consider this class as an GE, based on the grading, exams, essays, professor, lectures, TAs, and other aspects, etc..
-
Grading Distribution: 25% 5 response papers (5% each) + 27% Midterm Essay + 28% Final Essay + 20% Discussion Participation. Each reponse paper is about 400 words, 1-2 pages long. Midterm essay is an assignment consists of three prompts, 600-700 words (3-4 pages) for each prompt, altogether 1800-2100 words in total. Final Exam is an essay of 1000 words, 6-7 pages in length. All the essays and papers are based on the reading materials assigned in class, and some part of the lecture materials. As long as you do the readings, you'll be fine with those essays.
-
About Grading: The grading on the five response papers, midterm essays and final exam essay are completely up to your TAs. So it might be terrible to have to bad and harsh-grading TA, who can screw your grades as well as your gpa. On the other hand, it will be very very easy for you to get through the quarter if you luckily meet an angel TA. The final grade is based on absolute scale (93=A), so you cannot lose too many points on each of the paper in order to get an A. My suggestion on all the papers is that if you are not sure about that, you can schedule with your TAs to talk about what you wrote or going to write in your essays to make sure that those contents are what your TAs want to see. If this aint work either, it is really necessary to switch section (swith TA) or consider to PNP/drop the class, as TAs have full decision on your grades and your fate in this class.
-
About lectures and professor Mathur: The lectures are recorded and can be accessed on bruinlearn, so it is not necessary to go to the in-person lectures. I never met with professor Mathur so I cannot comment, but I think her lectures are not that interesting, which you might fell asleep in fact. The lectures and the materials are not that intriguing to be honest.
-
About TAs: This Art History 25 course has a quite large TA team. We have 6 TAs this quarter I remember, so it is all about your luck that which TA you enrolled with. Different TAs have very different grading standards, thus possibly might have very different A rate (this is not up to Professor Mathur, who just in charge of delivering lectures and design exams), which means it is possible that almost all of the students of one TA's section get A while students from another TA's section can very hardly get A. From my point of view, I would like to recommend my TA Amy Crum. She is a PhD candidate in this field, and she is very nice, professional, caring, and give good grades overall. I got 1 point lost in altogether the five response papers, 24/27 in midterm paper (the hardest part of the quarter), and full mark 28/28 in the final paper, which I think is a very nice grader who is willing to give her students good grades. She also accomodated for students who are not able to go to the class in person through the online zoom conduct. I would say take Amy's sections if they are available, and you will go through the quarter easily under her help and her easy&fine grading standards. Btw to mention that I heard one TA named Natalie Zhang graded assignments very harshly according to my friend, so try to avoid her section if that's possible unless you want challenges.
-
Workload: The response paper is assigned roughly biweekly, so the workload I think is okay and managable. Readings are assigned every week, about 50-80 pages everytime, but it is fine to just scan through. It is not wise to leave all the readings until the midterm week and final week, because you'll have to read tons of reading in a very short period of time in that case and will have VERY GREAT PRESSURE. Midterm week and Final week can be a little bit more exhausting, as you will have to synthesize and integrate all the materials you went through in the previous weeks, but still it is managable.
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Conclusion: Overall, this class is a GE with medium workload and medium difficulty. It may not be that hard like those history GEs, but still it requires you to spend some time every week to study for it in order to get a decent grade. All that matters in this class is your TA, who can fully decide your grade and fate in this class. If you meet a TA that grades very harshly, then it will be wise to switch TA or PNP or drop the class. If you meet a great TA, then it will be a quite easy GE. It might be hard to determine which TA is good before attending the class and getting assignments graded, so I suggest that go over all the reviews to see which TA's sections are great and which TA's section should be avoided. Good luck!

Helpful?

5 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
June 17, 2020
Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: A

This class taught me so much about the not only the art world, but the effects of museums on infrastructure, communities, and culture. I loved this class so much and Prof Mathur is the perfect person to teach it.

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ART HIS 25
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Dec. 26, 2020
Quarter: Fall 2020
Grade: A

Professor Mathur is a really good lecturer and the materials she taught were also pretty interesting. Before this class, I've honestly never thought about museums in a critical fashion, but I grew to appreciate the politics and structures of the museums over the course of the class. My TA, Felix, held extremely engaging discussion sessions and was really helpful. The midterm consisted of three questions that required us to write ~600 words each and the final was one large essay that required us to write ~1000 words. The midterm questions were straight forward but the essay prompt for the final was actually pretty vague - each TA had different interpretations of the prompt and the whole class was also pretty confused. We were given a week to finish the midterm and 4-5 days to finish the final essay, which was a little rushed. Despite the slightly lengthy midterm and final, I would still recommend taking this class with Mathur since people can actually learn stuff.

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March 12, 2016
Quarter: Winter 2016
Grade: P

Professor Mathur is one of the best professors I've had at UCLA in that she is incredibly thoughtful, intelligent, and always eager to promote discussion. That being said, had this been the only class I'd taken with her, I probably wouldn't have the same opinion. I think the real limit to this course was the dense, boring textbook ($80) we had to buy and which she used to structure her whole class. I felt like we were going over and over the same museums/themes for ten weeks because she was just trying to give us our money's worth for the text. And though she rarely went over the readings, the midterm itself was structured around your knowledge of all the authors and essays up to the test. She mentioned possible guest speakers and field trips, but our only trip to the Hammer was for a panel on museum careers and not necessarily related to the class. Overall, while Mathur herself is a great lecturer, I would wait around for one of her classes or seminars on Southeast Asian art.

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ART HIS 25
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
April 12, 2022
Quarter: Winter 2022
Grade: A

Class was super easy and I never went to lecture but still got an A. However BEWARE OF TAs. Its all essays, and the TAs are the only one who grades them. As a person, felix was super nice, but awful for grading. Prof was chill and changed my grades when I met w her, but do not take through felix.

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Jan. 8, 2024
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: A

Saloni is very kind and insightful. Loved their class.

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Dec. 19, 2023
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: B+

I took this for a literary & cultural GE and it was def an easy class, just really boring. You can tell the professor really loves what she does, but if you aren't into art like me you will probably be fighting your sleep in this class. The grading is as follows: Participation - 18% 2 response papers - 12% 2 quizzes - 10% In-class midterm - 20% Exhibition review essay - 20% Take home final - 20%.

Participation: It was based on going to your discussions. I loved my TA (Mal Meisels). They were really helpful, nice, and understanding. They allowed us to be excused from discussion as long as you sent an email one hour before the discussion. They also allowed extensions being that they graded all our assignments as long as you let them know at least two days before the deadline. They had us each do a reading summary as part of our participation grade that everyone can look back on and use which was beneficial in the end since the readings were pretty important in the class. (They said it was their first time doing this so depending on your TA it might be different)

Response Papers: The first response paper we were tasked with visiting a museum and to analyze an object. It had to be 400-500 words. The second response paper we had to find a social activism online through a social media site that engages with a museum and you had to write a label for it which was my favorite being that it was only a couple sentences. I don't know if it's the same each year, but these assignments were not too bad.

Quizzes: We had two in class quizzes that had to do with readings or video she assigned the week prior. Both were easy.

In class midterm: Half was multiple choice the other was free response. It had to do with the readings (what author said this) and a little bit of what she talked about in lecture. If you barley did the readings or understand the concepts in class you won't do go. The TAs weren't grading the free responses too hard, but you did have to meet to main points and expand as much as possible.

Take home final: You were given the prompt Thursdays class and you had until Tuesday to turn it in. 700 words I believe about critiques in museums. I did it in one day and got a high B so you'll be fine.

Overall, pretty boring lectures, but liked the discussions. Readings were annoying, but doable and if you want a class to get a good grade in, I would take it.

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Dec. 14, 2023
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: A+

Professor is really old fashioned - you will get kicked out if you use your phones during lecture. Midterm (in-person blue book) was all memorization. Either read everything each week or skim read and go to lectures. Lectures go over the important parts of reading that will be asked about on the test. The final (take-home) was two essays & both had relatively interesting prompts.

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Oct. 16, 2023
Quarter: Fall 2022
Grade: A+

This class was an easy GE to take. I enjoyed the content as well and the essays for the class were easy and fun. They gave you a lot of leniency on what you could write about which I liked. Midterm was in person but not tough if you do the readings.

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Dec. 20, 2011
Quarter: N/A
Grade: N/A

I took this course to fill a requirement, but after I can honestly say I love art of South Asia. Professor Mathur is so passionate about what she teaches it's hard to not love her and love the subject. She is very approachable and when you go to her office hours she really want to help you. I would 100% recommend Mathur for any student. She is tough and expects her students to know the material, but I think this is a great quality.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
ART HIS 25
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2022
Grade: A
March 24, 2022

I wish to write this review to help future generation studets who consider this class as an GE, based on the grading, exams, essays, professor, lectures, TAs, and other aspects, etc..
-
Grading Distribution: 25% 5 response papers (5% each) + 27% Midterm Essay + 28% Final Essay + 20% Discussion Participation. Each reponse paper is about 400 words, 1-2 pages long. Midterm essay is an assignment consists of three prompts, 600-700 words (3-4 pages) for each prompt, altogether 1800-2100 words in total. Final Exam is an essay of 1000 words, 6-7 pages in length. All the essays and papers are based on the reading materials assigned in class, and some part of the lecture materials. As long as you do the readings, you'll be fine with those essays.
-
About Grading: The grading on the five response papers, midterm essays and final exam essay are completely up to your TAs. So it might be terrible to have to bad and harsh-grading TA, who can screw your grades as well as your gpa. On the other hand, it will be very very easy for you to get through the quarter if you luckily meet an angel TA. The final grade is based on absolute scale (93=A), so you cannot lose too many points on each of the paper in order to get an A. My suggestion on all the papers is that if you are not sure about that, you can schedule with your TAs to talk about what you wrote or going to write in your essays to make sure that those contents are what your TAs want to see. If this aint work either, it is really necessary to switch section (swith TA) or consider to PNP/drop the class, as TAs have full decision on your grades and your fate in this class.
-
About lectures and professor Mathur: The lectures are recorded and can be accessed on bruinlearn, so it is not necessary to go to the in-person lectures. I never met with professor Mathur so I cannot comment, but I think her lectures are not that interesting, which you might fell asleep in fact. The lectures and the materials are not that intriguing to be honest.
-
About TAs: This Art History 25 course has a quite large TA team. We have 6 TAs this quarter I remember, so it is all about your luck that which TA you enrolled with. Different TAs have very different grading standards, thus possibly might have very different A rate (this is not up to Professor Mathur, who just in charge of delivering lectures and design exams), which means it is possible that almost all of the students of one TA's section get A while students from another TA's section can very hardly get A. From my point of view, I would like to recommend my TA Amy Crum. She is a PhD candidate in this field, and she is very nice, professional, caring, and give good grades overall. I got 1 point lost in altogether the five response papers, 24/27 in midterm paper (the hardest part of the quarter), and full mark 28/28 in the final paper, which I think is a very nice grader who is willing to give her students good grades. She also accomodated for students who are not able to go to the class in person through the online zoom conduct. I would say take Amy's sections if they are available, and you will go through the quarter easily under her help and her easy&fine grading standards. Btw to mention that I heard one TA named Natalie Zhang graded assignments very harshly according to my friend, so try to avoid her section if that's possible unless you want challenges.
-
Workload: The response paper is assigned roughly biweekly, so the workload I think is okay and managable. Readings are assigned every week, about 50-80 pages everytime, but it is fine to just scan through. It is not wise to leave all the readings until the midterm week and final week, because you'll have to read tons of reading in a very short period of time in that case and will have VERY GREAT PRESSURE. Midterm week and Final week can be a little bit more exhausting, as you will have to synthesize and integrate all the materials you went through in the previous weeks, but still it is managable.
-
Conclusion: Overall, this class is a GE with medium workload and medium difficulty. It may not be that hard like those history GEs, but still it requires you to spend some time every week to study for it in order to get a decent grade. All that matters in this class is your TA, who can fully decide your grade and fate in this class. If you meet a TA that grades very harshly, then it will be wise to switch TA or PNP or drop the class. If you meet a great TA, then it will be a quite easy GE. It might be hard to determine which TA is good before attending the class and getting assignments graded, so I suggest that go over all the reviews to see which TA's sections are great and which TA's section should be avoided. Good luck!

Helpful?

5 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
ART HIS 25
Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: A
June 17, 2020

This class taught me so much about the not only the art world, but the effects of museums on infrastructure, communities, and culture. I loved this class so much and Prof Mathur is the perfect person to teach it.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
ART HIS 25
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Fall 2020
Grade: A
Dec. 26, 2020

Professor Mathur is a really good lecturer and the materials she taught were also pretty interesting. Before this class, I've honestly never thought about museums in a critical fashion, but I grew to appreciate the politics and structures of the museums over the course of the class. My TA, Felix, held extremely engaging discussion sessions and was really helpful. The midterm consisted of three questions that required us to write ~600 words each and the final was one large essay that required us to write ~1000 words. The midterm questions were straight forward but the essay prompt for the final was actually pretty vague - each TA had different interpretations of the prompt and the whole class was also pretty confused. We were given a week to finish the midterm and 4-5 days to finish the final essay, which was a little rushed. Despite the slightly lengthy midterm and final, I would still recommend taking this class with Mathur since people can actually learn stuff.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
ART HIS C170A
Quarter: Winter 2016
Grade: P
March 12, 2016

Professor Mathur is one of the best professors I've had at UCLA in that she is incredibly thoughtful, intelligent, and always eager to promote discussion. That being said, had this been the only class I'd taken with her, I probably wouldn't have the same opinion. I think the real limit to this course was the dense, boring textbook ($80) we had to buy and which she used to structure her whole class. I felt like we were going over and over the same museums/themes for ten weeks because she was just trying to give us our money's worth for the text. And though she rarely went over the readings, the midterm itself was structured around your knowledge of all the authors and essays up to the test. She mentioned possible guest speakers and field trips, but our only trip to the Hammer was for a panel on museum careers and not necessarily related to the class. Overall, while Mathur herself is a great lecturer, I would wait around for one of her classes or seminars on Southeast Asian art.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
ART HIS 25
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2022
Grade: A
April 12, 2022

Class was super easy and I never went to lecture but still got an A. However BEWARE OF TAs. Its all essays, and the TAs are the only one who grades them. As a person, felix was super nice, but awful for grading. Prof was chill and changed my grades when I met w her, but do not take through felix.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
ART HIS 25
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: A
Jan. 8, 2024

Saloni is very kind and insightful. Loved their class.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
ART HIS 25
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: B+
Dec. 19, 2023

I took this for a literary & cultural GE and it was def an easy class, just really boring. You can tell the professor really loves what she does, but if you aren't into art like me you will probably be fighting your sleep in this class. The grading is as follows: Participation - 18% 2 response papers - 12% 2 quizzes - 10% In-class midterm - 20% Exhibition review essay - 20% Take home final - 20%.

Participation: It was based on going to your discussions. I loved my TA (Mal Meisels). They were really helpful, nice, and understanding. They allowed us to be excused from discussion as long as you sent an email one hour before the discussion. They also allowed extensions being that they graded all our assignments as long as you let them know at least two days before the deadline. They had us each do a reading summary as part of our participation grade that everyone can look back on and use which was beneficial in the end since the readings were pretty important in the class. (They said it was their first time doing this so depending on your TA it might be different)

Response Papers: The first response paper we were tasked with visiting a museum and to analyze an object. It had to be 400-500 words. The second response paper we had to find a social activism online through a social media site that engages with a museum and you had to write a label for it which was my favorite being that it was only a couple sentences. I don't know if it's the same each year, but these assignments were not too bad.

Quizzes: We had two in class quizzes that had to do with readings or video she assigned the week prior. Both were easy.

In class midterm: Half was multiple choice the other was free response. It had to do with the readings (what author said this) and a little bit of what she talked about in lecture. If you barley did the readings or understand the concepts in class you won't do go. The TAs weren't grading the free responses too hard, but you did have to meet to main points and expand as much as possible.

Take home final: You were given the prompt Thursdays class and you had until Tuesday to turn it in. 700 words I believe about critiques in museums. I did it in one day and got a high B so you'll be fine.

Overall, pretty boring lectures, but liked the discussions. Readings were annoying, but doable and if you want a class to get a good grade in, I would take it.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
ART HIS 25
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: A+
Dec. 14, 2023

Professor is really old fashioned - you will get kicked out if you use your phones during lecture. Midterm (in-person blue book) was all memorization. Either read everything each week or skim read and go to lectures. Lectures go over the important parts of reading that will be asked about on the test. The final (take-home) was two essays & both had relatively interesting prompts.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
ART HIS 25
Quarter: Fall 2022
Grade: A+
Oct. 16, 2023

This class was an easy GE to take. I enjoyed the content as well and the essays for the class were easy and fun. They gave you a lot of leniency on what you could write about which I liked. Midterm was in person but not tough if you do the readings.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
ART HIS C180C
Quarter: N/A
Grade: N/A
Dec. 20, 2011

I took this course to fill a requirement, but after I can honestly say I love art of South Asia. Professor Mathur is so passionate about what she teaches it's hard to not love her and love the subject. She is very approachable and when you go to her office hours she really want to help you. I would 100% recommend Mathur for any student. She is tough and expects her students to know the material, but I think this is a great quality.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
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