It is difficult to follow her lectures as she is so passionate about the subject that she goes on tangents about a topic that is actually not very useful to gaining knowledge that would help you in the class. Read or you won't follow. However, she is very passionate and willing to help and makes clear what she is looking for with study guides.

Disorganized teaching style. Hard grader on papers. Nice person, but overall, she was an average professor.

I had Prof. Blumenthal for a history methods course. It was a little unclear what we were supposed to be learning but assignments were graded fairly and consistently. Personally, I find Crusade history dull but Prof. Blumenthal's passion for the topic is refreshing. She's a pleasant person that I always enjoy seeing in class and would take again.

Extremely BORING and useless. She rambles the whole 75 minutes of class and you absorb nothing useful from her lectures. If you want to suffer and be bored to tears, take her. TONS OF READING!!!! 5 papers. I DON'T RECOMMEND!!!!!

History on slaves in medieval society. She is EXTREMELY boring and talks the entire class then complains when students don't really talk in class. Tons of reading, around 100 pages per night. 3-3 page papers, 5 page midterm, 10 page final. Lots of reading and writing for a boring class.

Interesting class. Teacher wasn't hard nor was the material. There's one I class midterm, 5 essays (3-5pgs) based off readings and a take home final. Teacher rambled a lot, ppts aren't useful but listen well to what she says and take notes. Don't have to do ALL readings, select the essays you want. Fun class overall, interesting material.

Blumenthal is a really nice lady, but her lectures are so boring (Unfortunately, attendance is mandatory). But like I said, she is really nice and understanding, and is always willing to help her students, which makes up for the boring lectures :)

She assigns books that are incomprehensible and useless for studying. Her lectures consist of 2-3 slides of info to write down. Her actual lectures consist of her speaking for an hour straight without stopping.

These people are unfair. She does tend to just go off with her lectures. She wont stop untill someone asks her a question and she tends to expound on the same subject longer than needed. It's just a symptom of her passion for history. You will not find another teacher who knows more about her subject. She needs to edit her lectures to the essential

She is obviously very passionate about what she teaches; however, she rambles, is very unorganized, and does not answer questions well at all. Plus, we had 2 readers, one was $100 and we never used it!!!!!

She's a slave driver! The $100 reader was awful because we didn't even use it! Class was ok though.

She is really enthusiastic about the course material. the class requires a lot of listening and notetaking, which may be hard for some people, but if you're interested in the subject she's great. and i think she's pretty!

All she does is ramble which makes it hard to pay attention. She is helpful when you need it.

I had every one of Blumenthal's classes for her first year at UCSB. She's a great professor, who really knows her stuff when it comes to Medieval Iberia.

well her lectures are impossible to follow because she does not write anything on the board. all u get is a mini outline and the rest is up to u to write. basically a lot of reading, and if u put enough detail in ur papers u will do well.

Boring teacher with little confidence when speaking. However, a very easy class if you do the reading.

This is one hot prof! Whether or not you like what she says, you're definitely gonna love how she looks when she says it!

This class was seriously frustrating. Disorganized lectures and course outline. Lectures were either way to vague or way to detailed, no inbetweens. Wasted too much time on discussing readings in class when she should have been lecturing!