Professor Griffey is very passionate about the labor movement and greater social movements in the United States. I thoroughly enjoyed the historical and early origins of labor movements in the US, especially those related to the New Deal, as Professor Griffey made those lectures very interesting and engaging. As we moved towards more modern labor movements, the class pace slowed, as did the movements, although not due to the professor's fault, he tried his best to keep us as engaged as possible. I enjoyed the class, but I did find Professor Griffey to be slightly unorganized when it came to class assignments. A lot of the time, he would give us vague prompts for the essays and contradictory information in class and office hours. This also happened with our TAs, with them giving us information that would then be contradicted in lecture. If it were not for this, I argue the class would've been much more enjoyable, but it was a truly interesting class.

I'm a stem major who took this on a whim because I needed a 3rd class, and it ended up being one of my favorite classes I've taken at UCLA so far. His lectures are very engaging and they're recorded as well, although he does check for attendance via a Google form that he puts up a QR code for during class. Absolutely loved my discussions with my TA (shout out to Kerr!) and the workload was moderate—20-40 page readings every week, watching a few documentaries, and 2 papers, one of which counted as the final. There was an in-person midterm that was very easy to do well on as long as you knew the keywords. If I could take this class again I would!

Great guest lecturers, but in second half of quarter little-to-no readings that help for final paper. Four assignments and one in-person midterm that are all fairly easy if you generally keep up with what is going on with the class.