Ben is an interesting professor and an incredibly talented intellectual. He made his classroom very welcoming, and although sometimes he would go off-topic in his lecture, I really enjoyed his talk most of the time. Go to his office and chat with him! You'll be surprised how knowledgable he is.

Professor Olguin is not your textbook college professor - and for some folks that is amazing, for some, not so much. He adds a lot of stories about life experience into his lectures, but they are valuable to the overall class experience. The readings were powerful, and he always picks great TA's. Do not be intimidated by the unconventional class.

It was chill class, the readings are interesting and not too heavy. There are weekly quizzes, but they not hard and you can reference the readings during them. The essays and written part is easy. I barely did readings and managed to end with a 97+, so if you put in the minimal amount of effort and attend section, you'll be fine. I liked it overall

Ben Olguin is an amazing person. He is very kind and thoughtful when responding to students. As previously mentioned by other people, he often goes off-topic however, it's a minimal flaw. He's also soft spoken which makes it hard to hear him in a lecture hall full of students.

These other reviews are not accurate, he is a solid, nice, and funny professor here at UCSB. I personally wanted to take this class to write an academic research paper and learn about the course topics. Others just wanted an easy pass and did not want to put in any work.

The material itself is pretty interesting and the content is not too difficult. The professor and his lectures were pretty disorganized. He was not very communicative in regards to what was expected of his students and he would change readings with very little heads up. Overall the course is interesting, but I would not take it again.