CLAS 2020

Not sure why his name is listed here as Bradford. His name is Gregory. This was an awesome class. Hays is an amazing lecturer. The class is listed as a 75 minute lecture but he only lectures for 50 because you have a weekly discussion and the class is only 3 credits.
The class teaches alot about ancient Roman history, philosophy, government, economics, religion, and culture. It covers alot of material I'll admit but it's all fascinating. There's a mid-term, weekly journal entries (for completion), a paper, a participation in discussion grade, and a final. Also I had a really cute TA.
All in all I would recommend this class to anyone with some semblance of an interest.

Really interesting class!! I took Latin in hs so I had some background in Roman history, but I still learned so much. Readings are long, but you can get by without doing all of them/just reading parts of it. Participation and attendance to discussion are part of your grade, but as long as you participate 1-2 times a class, you're good. You have 4 short papers (3 pages I think), and I recommend taking the feedback your TA into consideration because that's the only way you'll do well on them. Final was pretty hard and you have to memorize a lot of terms, but if you went to class often and did the readings, you should be fine. It's def one of the best classes I have taken at UVA!

I was disappointed by this course! Having taken Latin in high school and at UVA, I was really excited to jump into Roman Civilization in a college setting, however I feel like we only scratched the surface here. I think my biggest disappointment with this class is that its not set up for the student to succeed. There are hours of readings each week which are very dense but have little relation to course ideas and these readings are necessary to participate in discussion. Participation in discussion is necessary and you have to do the readings to adequately participate. In my opinion, the lectures are not organized well a require a lot of outside-of-class time to connect all the ideas. The exams are long which is expected, they are just very picky. For writing assignments, you are graded on things not listed in the prompts or on things you are not asked which is insane! I know I also had a weird semester with Hays being out for a medical issue for an extended period of time, but I feel like this course is not set up for student success given that no adjustments were made with Hays out and it was on us to teach ourselves. #tCFS24