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.

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.

Professor made it clear that participation/attendance was important in order to succeed but he became lenient due to the change in circumstances. Sure there is a lot of reading to do, but it's often summarized in sections and lectures. This course was eye opening as he introduced us to various issues, cultures & perceptions.

I'd been trying to take this course for a while and I wasn't disappointed. I admit the course is reading-heavy, but with weekly sections/quizzes, you're prevented from falling behind. I appreciated Olguín included irl anecdotes and didn't sugarcoat when covering heavy topics.

Ben is like an onion. There’s layers to his absurdity. He tried to manipulate us into writing him better course evaluations. This professor does not represent ucsb’s values. Overall negative experience. He makes over $170k teaching English and acts like he’s been wronged. Side note, his TA Taylor’s Holmes is awesome.

ben was really chill, a lot of these reviews demonize him but i thought he was alright. never did the readings but i still did well on the quizzes. homie gives extra credit for literally just reading half a poem out loud. it’s an alright class if you actually pay attention, and for covid he cut the attendance policy. solid dude.

If the class wasn't entirely over zoom this quarter, the professor would've likely fully enforced the "mandatory attendance or 10% of your grade off each absence" policy. The lectures are obviously unorganized and the slides used don't help understand what's happening either. The class must be taken for a letter grade, so no P/NP to escape either.

The professor is very beta and the entire class is just turning in versions of a huge research paper. Do not take

Mandatory attendance. 3,000-word essay is due at the end. Not fun.

Bad bad not good, lectures are mandatory but also aimless. Doesn't teach a lot of content just rambles, uses ancient PowerPoint style, talks about himself MUCHO. Has no empathy but operates under a "woe is me" attitude. Thinks he's doing everyone a favor. Do yourself a favor and take any other class :)

Ben takes this class too seriously and doesn't really deliver. Rules and regulations of the course are far too strict with little reasoning. Feels like a power trip for the professor. I am pretty bummed that I got stuck with this class. Would not recommend it to my worst enemy.