Great class! The structure allows you to give in what you're willing to take out of the course, but I would heavily recommend challenging yourself with the material as Gabi is really effective at building off of the readings should you do them.

I thought it was a great course that focused specifically on development theory. It covers: Economic Development, Human Development, Political Development, Democratic deepening and backsliding, Modernization theory, dependency theory, liberalism, neoliberalism, Marxism, neo-Marxism, statism, and different power dynamics. You also read economics and political scientists like Sen, Rostow, Hayek, Keynes, Marx & Engles, and Gramsci. These concepts are all difficult dense to read about, but Gaby does a good job of breaking them down in class and clearing doubts. The discussion posts aren't heavily weighted so most of your grade is based on the midterm, the group project presentation, and a final reflection paper. Readings are pretty long, around 3 per class and each one is like 15 - 35 pages.

Gabi is a great professor! She’s a great lecturer and her class grade is based off participation, weekly discussion posts, a midterm project (individual), and a final group project + reflection. The content was super interesting and I learned a lot from her! Try your best to do well on everything that is done individually in this class because the group project can tank your grade a little bit (esp if you get bad group members lol - this year the groups were ~9/10 people so it’s a lot lol). There are readings assigned and some of them are quite heavy but she does encourage you to use online aids like chat gpt to help you with them if you’re confused/stuck, and she also does a great job of going over them in class during her lectures. But like I said, if you do great on everything else you should get an A even if you don’t get your desired grade on the group project!