HIEU 3141

Lectures are scattered and Kershaw jumps from one thing to the next. There is no cohesion in this course. I understand that is the nature of the material, but that doesn't make the class more enjoyable. Kershaw is really enthusiastic, but rambles a lot. If you're looking for a pre-1700 history class to take, pick a different one. Midterm and final have 30-50 terms for review and only maybe 5 are on the test. 2 papers.

This class is definitely worth taking. The time period is really interesting and the lectures are well done. There were a couple of weeks were the lectures kind of dragged but it picked back up towards the end.

I took this for my pre-1700 European History requirement. Mistake. Don't take this class if you don't have a background in ancient Europe. Prof. Kershaw is really passionate about the subject, but his lectures are incredibly scattered, hard to follow, and quite dry. The readings focus heavily on primary texts translated from ancient languages. There are two papers, a midterm, and a final. Discussions are quite boring, but John Terry tries to make it interesting.

Kershaw is definitely a knowledgeable and exciting lecturer, however the class is much harder than it initially seems. He talks very fast in lecture, and if you don't keep up with the material you will only get more and more lost every week. The readings for discussion every week are rather lengthy and dense, and sometimes just downright uninteresting unless you have a fancy for this era in history. However, Drew Sorber made discussions my favorite part of the class because he got everyone actively participating and interacting with the primary sources as to help us understand the contents. Sorber was very friendly, approachable, and mostly available whenever one may have needed him -- definitely the best TA I've had. Overall, the class was good and Kershaw will not fail to make you chuckle or entertain in each lecture, so at least there's that if nothing that day interests you.

Kershaw is an extremely knowledgable lecturer, but due to COVID his lectures were asynchronous so I never actually got to see/interact with him. The overall course grade was based on very few assignments (2 essays worth 30% each, discussion grade worth 40%), usually there is also a final exam included which he scrapped because of COVID.
I probably wouldn't recommend taking this course simply to satisfy the general historical requirement. It's probably a good idea to have taken a college history course before taking this one.