ANTH 2589

I took this class Spring of 2022 and the subject matter was "The Materiality of Death and Dying." I LOVE PROFESSOR ALCONINI! The subject matter was so interesting, it was difficult to be bored during class. The weekly class format followed as is: lecture on Monday, group presentation on Wednesday, and either Wednesday or Friday there was a discussion section (50 mins). Each week there was an assigned reading, which could be a bit tedious (most I had to read for a week was maybe 30-40 pages, some shorter), a video to watch (longest was about an hour, shortest around 11 mins), and a quiz that went with the video (two tries to do the quiz on Collab). We only had three tests, three papers (two of them done with a partner), and a group presentation once the semester. The course is very chill and Prof. Alconini always considers student feedback. I highly recommend this course to everyone. I have yet to take any intro to anthropology classes, but this course was very easy to take without the prior introduction to anthropology courses and as a first year.

I'll keep it brief:

The professor: Great, super kind and considerate, knowledgeable.

The class: Easy A if you do the bare minimum. If you take it seriously and actually try, A+. Learning-wise, you get out what you put in — she exposes you to a large amount of info, but you don't have to memorize it all to get an A. If you like archaeology, though, you can really learn a lot.

Bad news: there's a lot of work — a lot of it more tedious than challenging. Good news: as long as you turn in a presentable product, you're almost guaranteed a 100. That's Alconini's style.

Disclaimer: I skimmed about 1/3 of the readings and didn't read 2/3 and I got a grade over 100. Re: the others who were complaining about disorganization — yes, it was disorganized, but that was mostly because our TA wasn't great. That TA is now gone. Alconini is great. Consider yourself lucky you found out about her before her classes get insanely popular.

The class was archaeology and the politics of sustainability with professor Alconini. The professor is super nice and passionate about the subject matter, but poor communication with the TA (who was also super nice!), immense amounts of unnecessary reading, and a syllabus that seemed to never match discussion/pre-discussion write-ups made this class feel like a bit of a mess. I blame online learning for a lot of the confusion and feel like this would've been a better in-person class. All that aside, I rarely read anything for this class and was able to do well on the tests and weekly quizzes by taking good notes on Alconini's asynch lectures, which were typically extremely info-dense but would include everything important from the very high reading load. The final research paper wasn't that big of a deal imo and was pretty easy to write, and the mapping/blog-post activity was easy as well. My partner and I didn't find the 1 group presentation we had to make too difficult and were able to knock it out in an evening. I took this class for the arch requirement of my major; I wasn't a super big fan of the subject matter but it wasn't boring either.

This was a COVID course, so I'm not sure what it's "really" like. But, this class had an unnecessary amount of work that at times, I really did not think the point was to actually learn. a 2000-level class with a research paper, 2 tests, mapping group project, weekly quizzes, weekly discussion write-ups, a group presentation (of a topic we all likely barely knew abt & thus learned nothing from our peers) and like 100 pages of reading (I couldn't tell if she really thought we'd be able to read that stuff). Like I said, this is a 2000-level class. I would have enjoyed it if not for the never-ending, quite unnecessary work that didn't really "test" our learning. The tests are oddly specific about obscure facts and dates - there were multiple questions I laughed after reading them. She's a very nice lady but damn i did not enjoy this class.

Professor Alconini is truly passionate about her field of archaeology and sustainability. The class is about just that, and each week covers a new method of sustainability from indigenous people. For example, water capturing techniques such as cisterns and qanats. Your grade consists of 14% online quizzes, 15% discussion (TA), 8% group presentation, 2 tests 20% each, 8% story map project, 15% research paper. The online quizzes were 1-2 a week and were 3-6 questions on either an asynchronous lecture or a documentary. No time limit and I felt they were fair, although a few had ambiguous wording and sent me for a loop. You got 2 attempts for each quiz. The group presentation was just being assigned an article / study and having to present what it was about to the class once throughout the semester (each Monday's class was 2 student group presentations and each Wednesdays class was an async lecture). The two tests were multiple choice, I haven't taken test 2 yet, but test 1 was reasonable albeit had a few questions that asked like "what year did this happen" where it's hard to remember that type of thing. The story map project was you and a partner writing about 4-5 paragraphs on a certain topic related to the class and making a blog post about it. Graded fairly, you get the full 8% if you turn in good work. The research paper is what I'm procrastinating right now, but it's supposed to be about 8 pages covering two archaeological techniques and how they succeeded or failed or something like that. I don't enjoy writing too much so it's kind of painful. Overall, Professor Alconini is awesome and definitely enjoys herself and is actually an archaeologist from Peru, so I partially wonder if she'll go back to that after covid. She also brought in a few guest speakers which was really fun and not all professors do.

The professor: I took a new archeology course (about death/dying) with Dr. Alconini, and it was nothing short of awesome! I thought this class was going to be boring, but it was really interesting. It's clear that Dr. Alconini is passionate about her work, and she talks about her research too. She's really kind and really approachable. If you're an anthro major (or someone looking to get their beyond the west class out or just looking for an easy A/stress free class), TAKE A CLASS WITH ALCONINI! I took it during COVID with Zoom classes, and honestly, it couldn't have been any better.

The class: It was largely asynchronous. We'd have to watch recorded lectures and take weekly quizzes on them. The quizzes sounded daunting at first (I think there were 25?) but they were super easy because they were only 2-4 questions (and you could easily answer them by paying attention to the lecture). There were a few writing assignments, that included writing an opinion-based essay and a blog post that were tedious, but they weren't hard. If you did them and tried a little bit, you could get full credit. There were readings assigned, but you could either skim through them or skip them, as they were often covered and discussed in detail in discussion and the lectures (the exams didn't really take anything out of the readings anyways). Out of our class meeting Wednesdays and Fridays, we would have to attend Fridays to watch partners/students present a reading (pretty much the only one you're supposed to deeply read), which was an easy thing to do. We do end up having tests as well (I think we had 2 and a final which was just an exam 3), basically read through your notes for a good hour and you'll be set. She doesn't trick you with exams at all.

Overall: I got an A+ in this class and I have absolutely 0 background in archeology. This class ended up being so interesting and so fun. It wasn't like I was learning or in a class, but instead like I was watching a documentary about the stuff. Try a little bit and an A+, that's right an A+ not just an A, is more than easily achievable. Also definitely get to know Alconini if you can - she's just a delight to speak with. This is a really straight-forward, VERY interesting, low-stress and chill class. I can see Alconini's classes becoming something like Dracula and other classes (easy and enjoyable) among students alike.