HIAF 2001

Take this class! I started this class not knowing much about African history, and I have definitely learned a lot. La Fleur is an excellent instructor and incredibly knowledgeable. As a bio/pre-med person, I especially appreciated the health and environmental aspects of the history. The readings were sometimes difficult, but you do not need to know them in incredible detail—skimming and main ideas are all you need.

The course is based on participation, weekly short-response HWs (mostly completion-based, just show effort), map quizzes (easy to study if you make flashcards), term IDs (pulled from lecture and prominent readings), and take-home essays (based just on the readings, so helpful if you highlight/annotate as you do them). If you time-manage the essays, engage in lecture, and get the main ideas of the readings, you’ll be more than fine. La Fleur also encourages growth, so it’s ok if you struggle a bit in the beginning!

Overall, would HIGHLY recommend this course to anyone. #tCFF24

If I could recommend one class that I've taken to anyone, it would be this class with Prof. La Fleur. As a bio/CS major I was just looking to take an interesting non-STEM class, and this was the best possible choice I could've made.
First off, Professor La Fleur is INCREDIBLE. He is not only a fantastic lecturer but he's an amazing person in general, and you'll never be bored—he does a wonderful job of fostering conversations and always shares super funny and interesting things about his life. He's insanely qualified to teach about African History (has written books, lived in Africa, etc.) so I couldn't recommend it more in terms of the quality of what you'll learn.
The readings pick up as the year goes on, but the more you take notes on them the better you'll do on the exam (or the easier it'll be) because you'll have a ton of information to work with. The exams are not bad if you care about the content and have studied, and he emphasizes that he doesn't want you to have any 'bad stress' so he works with people to make sure they get the grade they want.
Overall, I LOVED this class and think he is just one of UVA's best. If you're looking for a sign to take this class, this is it.

A super passionate professor. LaFleur is incredibly engaged throughout the class and teaches a deeply intellectual course on African history and Africa's place in the world. The first bit, on ancient history, felt a bit long, but the course was brilliant as it progressed onto the building of Empires, Mansa Musa et al. It is a lot of reading, but I'd highly recommend it. My only tip is to sit towards the front of the class, as, with 60 people, it is quite big to be in a Nau hall room.

I loved this course! Professor La Fleur is obviously very enthusiastic about the course material, and early African history was incredibly interesting to learn about. La Fleur is an engaging lecturer, and this was probably the best course I've taken at UVA so far. There is a good amount of reading for this class, but you can probably get by with skimming some of it/strategically and selectively doing the readings. The bulk of your grade in the class is made up of the exams, which is half an essay you write the week before and half identifications done in class. For the IDs, you do 5 out of 10 options, which is nice. As long as you've shown up to lectures and done most of the readings, you'll do well in this class. There are also weekly responses to the readings. This class is a fair amount of work, but it's not more than any other history class, and it's incredibly interesting, and, in my opinion, well worth the effort.

Professor LaFleur and TA Chloe are genuinely great people. They understand that you have more going on outside of school and the class is very forgiving given that attendance isn't required and he gives options for quiz retakes at the beginning of the semester. The course grade is composed of midterm 1 (20%), midterm 2 (20%), midterm 3 (20%), participation (30%), and quizzes (10%). Half of each midterm grade is an essay and the other half are IDs.
Tbh you can get by skimming the readings for the answers to the weekly assignments and get rest of the information in discussion.
My one bone to pick in this class is that a good chunk of the class is dedicated to checking your bias against Africans and African history. While I think that is important, I do think it does a disservice at times to African history. This may be structured differently than other history courses you've taken since there aren't many documents to go off of in early african history, and historians instead heavily rely on artifacts and science to piece together what happened.
#tCFfall2021