PLIR 3400

Furia assigns a lot of reading. The books are pretty interesting but skimming through is perfectly fine. Class itself is not the most engaging but the survey questions are a quick and easy way to boost your grade. This course is a pretty easy A.

My favorite class by far. Professors like Furia are the reason why I love politics. Definitely an easy A if you do your readings or just go to discussion and let someone else summarize the readings for you. If you're looking to be in the GDS program, he runs the securities and exchange program so make him your bff. All the TA's were lax about the class. Geoff was the man despite his awkwardness.

Strength: Furia is a skillful academic who can speak engagingly in a lecture.

Weakness: The way he taught the class -- considering the readings along with the lectures -- felt pointless. The material was interesting but lectures were unnecessary except for attaining a one-line main argument about the topic/reading and doing an in-class assignment. Readings were purposefully meant to be skimmed and not deeply considered.

A Note about Readings: READING LOAD IS RIDICULOUSLY HEAVY. (On average, you are assumed to finish a 300-page book in two classes.) If there was anything I took away from this course, it was picking up any book, skimming through, and finding a general main argument. I HATED THAT. I see the benefit there is with that, but for the sake of education, it treated learning like swallowing wine whole -- there was no savoring involved.

Fun class. Don't try to take tons of notes, write down basic ideas and try to just get the main points. The tests ask you to refer to readings so it is important to do them, but the class didn't have all that much reading. One note- when doing the policy brief work hard on your outline and oral presentation. Doing that saves you at the end of the semester when you're trying to finish the brief during finals

The course and the material itself were fascinating if you like Politics and International Relations, but Furia did his best to make everything sound more complicated and confusing than it really was. His lectures were jumbled and taking notes is not necessary in the slightest. This class seemed to be more of a Current Events class than an International Relations class- there wasn't much emphasis on theory. The Midterm and Final are easy because you get a list of possible questions ahead of time. The Policy Brief is a great assignment because you get to choose your topic and you have so long to do research and write it. My discussion section was the best part- Art is incredibly knowledgeable and has interesting stories to tell- he knows how to run a discussion section well, he always got student participation and asked interesting questions. It was necessary to stay up to date with the readings because of the pop quizzes- which then ended up being arbitrary questions and you could do well or not regardless of whether you did the readings. Overall a pretty frustrating class but interesting and not too difficult.

don't take this class if its lecture format. it would've been better if furia was teaching 20 instead of 200

The pop quizzes make you keep up with the reading, but once you get to lecture Furia just rehashes the readings, and makes the lecture pretty dull and pointless.

Pop quizzes make you keep up with the reading. Some of the questions are really easy, but some are pretty detail oriented. Midterm/final has a study guide from with all questions will come; knowing the study guide makes for an easy test.