HIEU 2051

Professor is so very boring. Every couple of seconds he pauses with a seemingly never ending uuuuuuuhhh and the terms the course focuses on are so simplistic making it difficult to pin point what to actually study for the test. The grading is pretty easy and the amount of reading which is assigned is overwhelming. That being said you don't need to do the reading to excel but you do need to manage to pay attention in an extremely boring classroom.

This course is a must-take for anyone studying history or economics, or interested in the general evolution of human civilization. The course covered the development of the European economy from roughly 1000AD to 2000AD, though there is information on the late Roman Empire and the Dark Ages, as well as the 21st Century. Professor James is a fairly dry lecturer who says "um" or "uh" a lot, though he is pretty chill in his teaching of the class. I would say his teaching style is more than redeemed by the quality of the information taught. I found the course topic to be fascinating and engaging for the entirety of the semester. The course is also fairly easy and is not very demanding in terms of time and effort. Class meets twice a week, and your grade consists of a midterm (1/3 of grade) and a final (2/3 of grade). Both exams consist of IDs and True/False-Short Answer hybrids, and the final exam includes two long essays. Homework is not graded and consists of reading two texts and various online readings, some of which are only "recommended." The reading is very interesting, though can be a bit dense. One of my few complaints is that the various readings do not coordinate particularly well chronologically with the class lectures, though I would attribute that to the fact that this course is only in its second semester. That being said, the reading is not really necessary- I did less than half of the reading in the texts and very little of the online readings and earned an A in the course. The best strategy is to attend every lecture, take very good notes, and study those notes in their entirety for both exams. Overall, I would definitely recommend this course, especially if you have any interest in the subject area.