History 172C
Marotti is very unique in his style of teaching. The practice of reading and analyzing primary documents (which you will do a lot of) can be tedious, but it also heightened my critical thinking considerably, which is something I am thankful for. Marotti's lectures are basically whole class discussions led by him, and as another poster said, I would definitely recommend attending if you skip on the readings or fail to entirely comprehend them. He takes attendance, so skipping class is just overall a bad call. He tends to empasize main ideas over and over, so keep these crucial themes in mind while writng your papers.

Marotti's class was tough both in work load and grading. We always had a four page paper to work on (four of them were assigned throughout the quarter) and our TA was quite conservative about awarding high grades. The daily writing assignments you will turn in are also subject to scrutiny, and it will take some time to learn to write them properly.

As for Marotti's office hours, they could sometimes be an interesting experience. At the beginning of the quarter I felt as if every questioned I asked him was countered by him offering me another question. This was discouraging and often left me gun shy going into papers. But I don't believe this was out of lack of concern for student learning, and I did begin to understand Marotti better as the quarter progressed on.

I recieved an A- in the class, which I guess I shouldn't complain about since i only did around 50% of the readings, but considering where I stood prior to the final I am now left doubting the grade raising abilities of the extra credit writing assignments. But a small hit to my GPA may very well be a fair price to pay for the new ways of thinking I was exposed to in this class.

Oh Marotti. Funny thing about this class. On the first day there were like 250 people in the room. After Marotti showed the class how thick the course reader was, more than half of them dropped.

By all means though, Marotti is a really nice guy, and at the very least he does his best to be funny and entertaining to his class. Personally, I think he's a good guy. In terms of teaching, Marotti doesn't really seem to have much organization going on. Generally you have to read the readings to have a slight understanding to what in the world he's talking about. Ancient Japan isn't exactly easy to study since all the readings are primary documents, but as long as you ACTUALLY READ THEM, you'll be okay. He doesn't cover necessarily everything from readings, but he covers most of the important things. Going to lecture will really help you out when it comes to writing your papers and for the final.

The class is pretty standard: 3 three-four page papers, no midterm, and a final. Oh and the good thing about the papers is that he gives you a choice from like 9 essay prompts! Very generous of him. Final was pretty easy, only 2 essay prompts and no IDs and he emails you 13-14 essay prompts to study from while choosing 7 of them to be on the final exam. Discussion will definitely help you a lot to better understand the readings. Oh and don't bother buying the course reader, it's all uploaded online.

Lastly, one pretty cool thing about this class is that you get a chance to watch the original Godzilla during the quarter. If you can, I really recommend you go. You'll get a lot out of it and it will help you on the final. For the final, one of the prompts was on Godzilla so needless to say 50% of the exam didn't require much effort. Overall, I'd recommend Marotti. As long you as actually read, you'll be okay. Oh and I got an A in the class, hah.

I'm surprised no one has evaluated Dr. Marotti yet. He is an underutilized gem at UCLA. He exclusively teaches Japanese history. Marotti is an excellent professor with a different approach to teaching. Rather than lecture to a catatonic audience, he actaully engages his students. he makes his lecture into a discussion. In his class, you read documents, and you come prepared to discuss (or listen) about them in class. So it's not so much straight history with dates and wars, but rather a focus on primary documents to tell the story. And anyone knows primary documents beat some lame textbook anyway. Marotti himself is an excellent lecturer, pacing the room, biting his lip, jumping up with some brilliant idea, randomly yelling in class about his frustrations - he's a real character. He is also incredibly dedicated to students, holding strong office hours and always making sure to make them! One warning about Marotti is that his classes aren't easy. As a high performing professor, he expects a lot out of his students. Except more work in his class than most other history classes. Additionally he takes attendance and has question responses for EVERY class. But in the end, it's all worth it. If it's about the learning rather than the easy A, Marotti's the man.