Some classes are hard, this was just bad. Beware that the essay prompt she gives you is not actually what you are graded on and there are hidden requirements that she mentions briefly in class. Overall essays were graded horribly Prof has a shockingly bad understanding of history outside of LatAm, I felt second hand embarrassment during lectures.

Tbh I don't know why there are so many negative reviews. This is the easiest class I've taken at UCSB. We had weekly Eli reviews, a very easy midterm project and exam, and a short final research paper. I also only went to 50% of the lectures and still received an A. She is a bit disorganized, but still very nice and easygoing.

I have regarded many courses as some of the worst I have taken but I think this is actually the worst. We got behind in lecture so she made the last two assignments due right before finals. She was extremely disorganized and treated the class like it was the only one we were taking. It felt rushed and like I barely learned anything.

She does not know how to teach. I was lost and her instructions confused me even more. Grad students in the history department said shes notorious for being bad at her job. If I wanna take another history class, now I know who to avoid.

She is very unclear about her assignments and her lectures are even more confusing. It seems she doesnt have a good grasp outside LATAM and women history which made the class the blind leading the blind

I absolutely adore Professor Castillo-Munoz! She really cares about her students and about history and you can feel that when she lectures. I learned so much from her class and I loved that grading was based on the readings, midterm, and final. I would 100% take another class with her!

Loved taking this class and learned a lot of the history of US-Mexico relations. The course was online due to the pandemic but Prof Castillo-Munoz worked hard to make sure we still had a semblance of an actual classroom but did it in a way that wasn't annoying like other professors.

She had a good balance of homeworks and stuff. very good lecturer, she was a little tough on the midterm. Take-home final though. Very interesting and inspirational!

The only problem I had was that she did not give clear guidelines for assignments, so you never know if you are doing the work correctly. Assigned a lot of reading which is normal for a prosem but it was hard to keep up reading an entire book per week. Grading was not tough.

Was really looking forward to this class... HUGE LET DOWN... horrible lectures, hard to understand, takes attendance, VERY disorganized.... her powerpoint are useless and docks points to examine if you include info Not in her class material. So if you have learned stuff before or flush out your knowledge with your own research, it actually hurt u.

Her lectures are horrible- they are unorganized and have many grammatical and spelling errors. You are assigned to read roughly over 100+ pages per week... and only some of it will actually be useful for you for the exams. Lectures were about Latin America and covered NOTHING that would be on the exams. You basically had to teach yourself the class

Although it is true the professor makes mistakes on powerpoints on exams she is not a bad professor. The grading itself depends on the TA so just go to section, do well on papers an you're guaranteed a good grade.