HIUS 3282

Professor Gilliam is probably the most helpful professor I've experienced at UVA. He makes himself very available to his students and is so easy to talk to, so take advantage of his office hours. He gives great feedback on papers although the exams tend to be a little more challenging.

Professor Gilliam is an amazing lecturer and very personable. He really wants you to succeed in his class. The 10 page research paper is a little rough but he gives you all the help you need which makes it very manageable. I would recommend this if you have any interest in Virginia history.

Simply put, Gilliam is the most caring professor I've ever had. It's incredible how much he is willing to do to help you learn the material and write a strong and historically significant term paper. If you have any interest in VA history whatsoever, take the course!

Like most of the other reviews say, Professor Gilliam is one of the nicest professors you'll ever have at UVA. For the most part, the class isn't too bad, but his final can seem a little daunting. The final is cumulative, but as long as you pay attention to the "themes" of the class he likes to stress at the beginning, and know the main themes of the readings/books, you'll be fine.

Professor Gilliam is extremely nice and will provide you with a lot of help when writing your term paper. He is more than willing to read multiple drafts of your short essay and term paper, and even allows you to send him a practice midterm and final that he will provide feedback on. However, I unfortunately did not enjoy this class as much as I thought I was going to. I thought the material was overall very dry and the course focused too much on memorization of facts. The midterm was harder than I expected (It included ranking events in chronological order, which can be very tough when some of the events are not exactly momentous or only a few years apart). The final was take home and open note. Gilliam emailed one VERY open ended question out to the whole class and you essentially were responsible for discussing everything you had learned that semester in one essay. Overall, the class is worth it if you're looking to gain more knowledge on the Civil Rights movement and interested in Virginia politics.

Without a doubt this is the best class I have taken at UVA thus far. Professor Gilliam is the one of the most exemplary professors and is willing to help his students every step along the way. He makes his class very enjoyable and even invites his students to join him and his wife for dinner at his home in downtown Charlottesville. This class is very reading intensive and the final exam is an essay written to showcase the students' knowledge of the readings. The midterm is fairly easy, as he gives out a practice one to look over that is very similar to the one given; it has a few confusing dates, but overall it is easy to get a very good grade on. He gives you plenty of time to complete an 8-10 page term paper that is 45% of the your grade. I would recommend this class to anyone, history major or not. It is a joy just to get to know Professor Gilliam, let alone be taught so expertly by him.

It is worth noting that the class moves pretty slowly. You spend the first two weeks on Reconstruction, and then end talking about the Civil Rights Movement. But, as it is Virginia history, you don't spend much (any?) time talking about the national Civil Rights Movement or the simultaneous counterculture movement. Gilliam is really nice, and the course teaches much about local history. But if you're looking to learn more about recent historical trends in the South, and Virginia's place in those movements, this material won't satisfy that.

I took this class because I needed a history class and the reviews said Gilliam was great. Having taken this class, I can certainly say that Gilliam is a fantastic professor, but I wish I had taken a 1000 level history class instead to meet my history requirement. I’m used to taking science and math classes and history makes you draw connections in ways that I didn’t really have to do in science/math classes, if that makes sense. But if you’re a history buff this class probably won’t be a problem for you.

Gilliam really cares about his students and is invested in their success. He’s also had interesting careers in different fields and has lots of interesting stories. Having Gilliam as a professor was the best part of the class. If I weren’t so socially awkward I would have gone to office hours more often and gotten to know him better. On the first day of class Gilliam said that writing ability is as important as historical knowledge, and throughout the semester he’s worked hard to help students improve our writing. He also emphasizes that history is full of stories about people, and I think that looking at history through this lens made writing papers more interesting. My only complaint about him is that he doesn’t watch the zoom chat, so he won’t notice a message until the end of class (if he even notices it at all). No one said anything urgent in the chat, so it wasn’t a big deal, and this obviously won’t be a problem for in-person classes.

There was a lot of reading, about 30-50 pages per class, but you can get away with not reading some of it. The reading is mostly foundational/background info for lectures.

Graded assignments: Paper 1 (10%, 3 pgs, write about how journalists covered a murder in Cville), Paper 2 (15%, 3 pg, write about a VA Supreme Court case of your choice), Midterm (10%, fill in the blank, short answer, essay; though this may change because he didn’t know the format of the midterm until a few days before), term paper draft 1 (15%, ~10 pgs about topic of your choice, if this is good you don’t have to revise it), term paper final draft (15%), final (25%, essay, broad question, open book), participation (10%). I did horribly on the midterm (got a 64%, which is barely passing) but still ended with an A- in the class because my essays were good. He isn’t trying to trick you with the midterm (many people got As on the midterm), I just didn’t realize how much I didn’t know until I saw the questions. Gilliam offers to pair people who did poorly on the midterm with people who did amazing on the midterm as a study buddy / tutoring kind of thing. This helped SO MUCH. I met with another student one a week and it was really helpful for me to understand what the main points of the readings and lectures were as well as how they all tie together.

Gilliam will read as many drafts of your papers as you want as long as they are submitted at least a week before the due date. After the midterm he sent us an example of a perfect paper (helpful to compare our midterms to and see how to improve). He usually takes about 5-7 days to grade papers, (and he’s faster at grading essays than my other professors are at grading multiple choice tests).

We covered some topics I thought were boring (ex. railroads, economy, early 20th century politics) and some really interesting topics (ex. eugenics, racism, civil rights movement). It was really eye opening to learn about Virginia’s role in the eugenics movement (and UVA's role) and about how Virginia took a different approach to racism than the rest of the South did, and we delved way deeper into these topics than my high school history classes did. Class usually ends on time but sometimes ends 5-20 minutes early.

tl;dr Gilliam is an awesome professor! Readings are long, and some topics are boring. Maybe not the best if you don’t love history.

If there's one word I could use to describe Mr. Gilliam, it would be "Goat." The guy is hands-down the best instructor in the History Department. You will not meet another professor during your time here at U.Va. who is more dedicated to the success of his students than George Gilliam.

Be aware, however, that because this is a history class, there will inherently be a lot of reading and writing. He is not a particularly harsh grader but a lot of STEM students enroll in this class thinking it's an easy A which is naive thinking. If you are a good writer and are used to the workload, it'll be a cake walk. However, if you have never taken a history class before and writing/reading are not your strong suits, I would encourage you to make sure that you know what you're getting yourself into before enrolling in the class. Good writing is an incredibly useful skill to have but if you have not had to exercise that since high school, this class might be more than you bargained for!

Overall, I cannot speak more highly of Mr. Gilliam. He is, without a doubt, my all-time favorite professor that I have had in college and he has furthered my interest in Virginia and American history alike. He has an incredible command of the content and disseminates in a way that is captivating and makes you eager to come to class!

Professor Gilliam is a great storyteller, albeit he sometimes drones on with dates and facts. I don't know how helpful this review will be because this is his last time teaching at UVA. But every student can tell that he deeply cares about his students and for that I'm grateful! #tCFspring22