HIST 2002

Readings eventually hit 150+ pages a week during the course. Lectures are pretty informative and are engaging but if this is your first history course it does feel like a lot is being thrown at you at first. Lecture and reading material are not complex. Getting an A- or higher is achievable but your grades hinge on how well you perform on your midterm and final essays (the only grades besides section attendance).

Very difficult course. The readings were manageable at first but later on became long (200+ pages) and very dense. Grades were mainly composed of a midterm essay and a final essay, which need to have information from both the lecture and the readings. Professor Zelikow is also quite a boring lecturer to be honest. I regret taking this class as a first year and would not recommend it to a friend.

Only take this course if you are super into history. It covers a broad range of topics and students are expected to know a lot about global history before entering the course. I took this course to fulfill a Global Public Health requirement and found myself bored and very lost much of the time. However, I can recognize and appreciate that this would be an interesting class for those interested in global history; it just was not for me or anyone not fully engaged in the subject. You also have to watch about 3 hours worth of videos per week and take a 1 hour quiz after, which ended up being more time consuming than I thought it would be. Exams are take home papers with challenging topics that you really have to think critically through. Prof Zelikow is a history guru and a great resource for those who are passionate about history and global affairs. I would just dissuade people from taking this course unless you're truly interested in the topic.

Zelikow is very knowledgeable and experienced with the subject. Most of the instruction is done by video lectures available to the public. If you are on the fence do not take the class watch the videos in your free time. The grading for the course is very nit-picky and the class discussions can drag on. Instead of taking the course for a grade determined by a highly experienced foreign policy adviser, I would advise watching the video lectures in your free time as you see fit.

Professor Zelikow is extremely knowledgeable about history, but this course is not worthwhile in the slightest. There are about 7-10 video lectures each week which take at the very least 3 hours to complete outside of class. There's also a weekly quiz at the end of each set of videos, which you can do well on if you take really good notes and are paying attention during the videos, because most of the questions are really specific. He is extremely dry and boring and so are the classes, which are very heavily discussion based. The course is also really reading intensive, and there 2 pretty long papers for the midterm and the final. This course literally takes up so much time and covers so much material. Unless this class is required for you, there's absolutely no reason to take this class. If you're just trying to fulfill the history requirement for the college, there are so many more interesting and worthwhile history classes. Do yourself a favor and skip the hours and hours of listening to his boring monotone voice and take a different history class.

This is a very boring course. As a history major, this was very disappointing. Zelikow is indeed very passionate and knowledgable, but his discussions for this course are very dry, boring, and not very helpful. The readings were insightful, but also boring. If you are looking for a class to keep your interest, look somewhere else. There are weekly online quizzes that are quite difficult and the midterm and final are full size papers (around 12 pages each) that are frustrating and difficult. He also grades quite strictly.

This was a great class! Professor Zelikow is a great professor and challenged us to think about why events happened the way they did. The course was a lot of work - we had weekly readings and video lectures to watch outside of class with open note quizzes. The in-class portion was discussion based. Would definitely recommend if you are interested in history.

He is really knowledgable about his stuff!! The tests were open notes and online. We had to watch lecture videos online but it took FOREVER. You definitely spend more than 3 hours a week for this class. Prepared to do work. But the tests are fairly easy and he is a very approachable.

This class was extremely interesting, but very work-intensive. Definitely not an easy class. Professor Zelikow is very experienced and a great teacher; I learned a lot, but had many hours of readings and online videos as homework per week. I would recommend for anyone looking for a broad, comprehensive basis of knowledge of modern history!

This class required 3 essays, a midterm and a final exam. There was also weekly homework with short quizzes at the end of the video lectures and an attendance quiz of 5 questions at each class.

This class was pretty easy (since I had covered the exact same material in high school) and because of the course level to not very stringent in its expectations. Where it is really ridiculous is the amount of work. It's a digital class which means that the homework consists of watching about 7-11 lectures (which consists of about 2:30 hours of video even speeding up his very slow voice to 1.5). If you do all the assignments, you can get an A. I lazed off on watching the videos and got a B+.