Professor Strathman is easily one of the best professors I have had at UCSB. So knowledgable on international relations and that is reflected in his dense and engaging lectures. This is an upper division class so you should expect to put in effort. Readings are completely manageable and engaging, midterm and final are pretty straightforward.

I don't think the course was insanely difficult. Yes, we had a TON of readings but the lectures complimented readings well and were interesting! A little more guidance surrounding what would be on the midterm/final would be nice. Lots of content so hard to narrow down when studying. I will say I had a good TA though that handled the grading aspect.

I prayed to get struck by 50 bikes omw to his class.

The amount of reading assigned is comparable to what you'd normally see across multiple classes in an entire year. Most POLS majors I've talked to intentionally avoid this professor, and now I understand why, but with UCSB's limited course options some of us end up stuck. If you care about your GPA or your sanity, take literally anyone else.

As of writing this I am looking at 724 pages of readings for the 2nd half of the quarter. The final is cumulative. I have 100 on the midterm but that's not stopping me from failing lol About half (17… ish readings) are “recommended”, but our TA told us that these r NOT recommended but necessary for a good grade on the exam. This is inhumane

Very hard professor, but he is my favorite at UCSB. I generally learned so much from him and this class, but this class is incredibly hard. I would expect around 8 hours of reading per week, and you literally need to study every single thing he's ever said in his lecture and every author and its content for the midterm and final.