Professor Yan is a good professor. He speaks very slowly so his speaking is very clear. However, lectures can feel long and boring because of this especially for someone like me who is not super interested in this subject. The readings were sometimes long and uninteresting to me but they were manageable. Towards the end of the quarter I stopped reading all of them because well they were long and I was lazy. I recommend you read most of them so you can have something to talk about in discussion. Otherwise you will have a very boring and awkward time in zoom discussion meetings. Also, Professor Yan did not make us purchase a textbook which I always appreciate. The midterms and final were straightforward and there was a lot of information to pull from in the readings. There is a one page writing assignment every week and you are required to attend discussion for participation points. It's a slow paced class and an easy GE that does give you an appreciation for anthropology.

The content in this class was engaging and the grading was lenient, so I felt that I could learn at ease without the stress of tests.

Professor Yan is great, and often can be a bit funny, but most of the lectures felt like a bore. Maybe I just wasn't engrossed enough in the subject.

Discussion sections definitely mattered more, as the TA does pretty much all of the grading and often checks participation and attendance.

I would not take again, as I'm not really sure how I ended up in this class. Most of it felt very much like common sense to me.

Prof. Yan's lectures tend to be very long and can be a little bit of a bore at times, but his weekly assignments and exams are extremely straightforward and relatively simple to do. Also, my TA was so incredibly nice; he would do his literal best to give the best grades to the students. Altogether, Anthro3 was definitely an interesting class to take, and very easy to get an A in. Highly recommend.

2 papers worth 15% each, one final where you do mini essays worth 40%, participation 10%, and 20% for weekly written responses. His lectures were boring and not needed, says attendance is mandatory but does not check. Hard to understand what he says but easy class.

I would recommend taking this class. It's definitely an easy GE and the professor is efficient and clear. I enjoyed the discussions, and to get credit you just need to talk around 1-2 times. Weekly written 1-page reflections were required but those were double-spaced and really easy.

I would recommend taking this class. It's a relatively easy GE and the professor is efficient and pretty clear. Weekly written 1-page reflections were required but those were double-spaced and super easy. I put in a mid amount of effort and ended up with an A-.

This was a very interesting class and I'm glad I took it. Yan was very friendly and tried give us a good general background in anthropology. The lectures could get boring sometimes, but if you actually paid attention to what he was saying and tried to think critically about the concepts, you could get a lot from it. There were a few readings a week which were pretty interesting, and the exams were just short answer questions, which drew from concepts covered in the lectures and the readings and asked for examples. I imagine it might be harder in person, but because I took it online, we were allowed access to the readings, notes, and recorded lectures to reference in our responses, so it wasn't hard at all. Also we had 24 hours.
Overall, very interesting class with a very nice professor. Yan also has a very interesting background growing up as a farmer in China and fleeing the Communist Revolution, which he sometimes talks about and relates concepts to. I would recommend this class, especially to anyone interested in Anthropology (but I would recommend anthro 4 more if you're trying to choose between them, as I found anthro 4 more interesting and exciting).

Super easy class, I completely recommend to anyone who is considering it, especially with Yan. I never took great notes because he uploaded all the slides to CCLE so it didn't really matter. Sweet man, hard to understand at times but very passionate about the topics at hand. The weekly reflections were extremely easy and basically graded on just submitting it. All you need to do is show up to discussions and study using the slides for a day or so for the midterm and final and you'll be golden.

Exams and participation in discussion rely on you being able to draw main ideas from lectures and readings and being able to explain them or discuss how lecture ideas and readings relate to each other. If you can do that, then you'll have no problem with this class.