This was one of my favorite professors at UCSB. She is very passionate about what she teaches which makes learning easy. Attendance is not mandatory, but if you want to succeed you must go to lectures. Material is not easily accessible online and most content is provided in lecture. She is very open about grading criteria.

She assigns a lot of readings, but you can honestly get by without reading majority of the time. She covers most of it in lecture, but I would focus on the terms she doesn't go over in class because the midterm consists of a lot of memorization of terms and information. Both exams had very thorough review sheets that told you the essay prompts.

the lectures were sooooo boring and the midterm + final were not easy imo. i did so well in this class just because of all the extra credit opportunities.

Literally didn't attend a single lecture after the midterm and free balled the final by just studying on my own and i genuinely think i learned more on my own than with her

So boring and dreaded her lectures she genuinely sounded like a mom lecturing her kids about how she used to ride dinosaurs to school or something

I REALLY loved this class at the beginning, I always found myself really engaged by her lectures and the pieces she chose to show but... I did mediocre on the essay part of the midterm and now my final grade is very uncertain. I would take the class but make sure to consult with your TA on everything because grading on essays is so specific