Professor Alim is one of my favorite professors. He is extremely helpful, passionate, and want all his students to do really well. The exams were all asynchronous and online on Canva, and the 2 essays were quite easy. The workload is very manageable, because there is only 1 discussion post every week. The readings are very option (I barely did them) and still did very well on the test because he summarizes the readings during the lectures. I would highly recommend this class with Alim.

This was a really great class, he did it asynchronously during my quarter (as a commuter I loved this). I would recommend attending lectures at the very least, as he goes over all the material that will be on the tests and they are not recorded. The reading is a bit heavy, but he says to do the reading after the lectures to know what to focus on. He explains everything that is on the test in great detail. However, be warned because some of the test questions are incredibly long and detailed. Make sure you know everything he has mentioned will be on the test. Honestly, if you attend lecture, take notes, and look up what he said you will need for the test you will get an A. The material is very eye opening, it discusses how language is used to discriminate minorities and how we can have better educational pedagogies to fix this.

This class had lots of interesting material which made the lectures and discussions pretty engaging. If you watch the lectures, pay attention, and do the readings, you will be able to get every question right on the two tests which make up 60% of the grade. He makes sure that every question on them is taught in class, so it's a really fair test. The rest of the course is fairly graded as well, from the essays to the discussion section participation and attendance. There is no extra credit offered. Professor Alim is a really nice guy and cool dude.

I took this class online and almost dropped it when I saw the syllabus. It looks like its going to be a ridiculous amount of work but it turns out that you really do not need to do all the readings. He basically goes over all of the important stuff from the readings during the lectures, so the workload is not bad at all. You write 2 essays that are less than 2 pages each and you take a midterm and a final. You also do a weekly submission to your TA that's only a paragraph long. I still did the readings because they are interesting and help with the submission but don't panic if you can't finish all of them (there are like 100 pages assigned a week). Alim is funny and pretty engaging and incredibly helpful with preparing for the exams.

I took this class first quarter of freshman year during COVID-19 distance learning. Professor Alim is super helpful and super nice, and all of his TA's seemed pretty chill and interactive with the work material. Alim is not very strict (except about certain essay due dates) and likes to maintain a friendly class environment. His passion for the subjects discussed is apparent and really improves the class atmosphere. The coursework is very interesting and analyzes/criticizes relations between White normativity and spoken language. Most of the readings were very interesting, there were only a few that I did not enjoy. Not a difficult class as long as you stay on top of the readings and work with your TA groups. Definitely my favorite class first quarter. (To my understanding, the professor for this class changes every once in a while so if you get a chance to take it with Professor Alim it's definitely worth it!)

I found the discussions to be the most important portion in the class, as the lectures can be very long and often can be summarized in a few sentences. Definitely know specific names of certain cases and documentation to do well. However, keeping up with the class overall is not difficult and you should do fine as long as you show up to discussion each week.

TLDR: I recommend this class if you're looking for an easy social analysis GE (or just looking for an interesting class to take)

Class structure:
• Asynchronous lectures (recorded zoom lectures from like 2020) -- bulk of material, helpful in understanding the weekly zoom meetings
• Weekly readings -- imo very long, but not necessary if you watch the lectures
• Weekly zoom meetings/OHs -- should attend because Prof Alim basically gives out the answers to the exams and papers; even though he records them, he doesn't post them for some reason
• In-person discussions -- mandatory

Exams (60%):
• 1 Midterm + 1 Final (called them "celebrations of knowledge"), 30% each
• Super, super easy MCQ exams. Pay attention to his lectures, and you will be completely fine getting at least a low A on each exam. I did the readings in the beginning, but tbh you can get away with not doing them at all.

Discussion (20%):
• Participation (10%), Attendance (10%)
• Please attend your discussions because they are mandatory lol. However, they're not too bad, if not a little boring because it's basically content review. Prof Alim goes over the material already in zoom + recorded lectures
• Participation includes appearing as if you're paying attention to class, as well as weekly 1-2-3 assignments, which are basically reflection on the readings. You can probably just skim each of them and write whatever as long as it's somewhat relevant and coherent.

Papers (20%):
• 2 papers, 10% each
• 1-2 pages long, single-spaced, including citations
• It honestly depends on your TA, but all of the readings and Alim guide you toward an answer, and you can kinda ramble as long as you have a point. This is probably the hardest part of the course, but they're honestly not too bad either.
• It's worth noting that because of the TA strike this quarter, the second paper was optional, so you got extra credit if you wrote it. Normally, he doesn't give extra credit.

Very easy class. The readings will look intimidating at first (something like 100 pages a week) but they aren't actually necessary to do well on the tests, that said they can be pretty interesting. The midterm and final are very easy because he reviews all the material on them if you just go to the sessions you will do fine, the essays are also graded generously (usually). Overall it was a very interesting class, it goes over some interesting social issues and ideas. A good choice for a GE.
2 - 2 page single space essays, bibliography included in page count
2 - 2 multiple choice midterm/ finals 25 question each

Great class; I think everyone looking for a no-fuss GE should absolutely take Anthro 4 with Alim.

I'll start with my one (small) complaint: when I enrolled in the class, there was no indication that lectures would be online and asynchronous. I was a bit disappointed to learn this after the fact, but Alim's lectures proved to be quite interesting and engaging regardless of the fact that they were pre-recorded. However, I do think that in an in-person lecture setting, Alim's great teaching and amazing passion for the subject would be even more inspiring, so I have to say it's somewhat regrettable that we never got to be taught by him in person.

Aside from this, Alim does a great job of preparing his students for his exams (he calls them
Celebrations of Knowledge"). The tests are online and not proctored, and extremely doable if you review with the study guides/notes that others in the class will make. The only other grades are participation in discussions, which includes a weekly discussion post that is pretty much only graded for completion, and two short (~2 page) essays that were each due a week after the two exams. The first essay did not require any of your own research; you only needed to cite papers that had previously been assigned as weekly readings. For us, Alim decided to make the second essay extra credit, which was likely in part due to the TA strike. I'm sure grading of the essays varied slightly between TA's, but my TA graded very fairly: it seemed like as long as you followed the requirements and showed a decent understanding of the readings, you got full points. The grading structure was 10% for each essay, 10% for participation (5% for discussion attendance and 5% for weekly posts), and 35% for each exam.

As far as the content of the course, it has a pretty big focus on African American language, especially in hip hop culture, as that seems to be the subject of the majority of Alim's work. Readings are assigned from other linguistic anthropologists as well as from his own papers and two of his books. The books are considered required texts for the course, but I was able to find a PDF of one and was honestly completely fine without ever purchasing the other. If you have any particular interest in old-school hip hop, I would encourage you even more strongly to take this class with Alim; he has to be one of the more prolific researchers in that niche. The content of the readings can be quite wordy and may require re-reading paragraphs to try and understand them, but I found it not to matter much because Alim's lectures did a great job of highlighting the main points in a much more comprehensible way.

Overall, I found the class to be extremely manageable but still stimulating and engaging. I definitely came out of the class with a slightly more informed perspective on the world, despite it not being too challenging at all.

When I took this course, it was online, which made it relatively easier. It consisted of 10 online modules you would have to work through over 10 weeks. There were attached readings to the online lectures. The course is heavy in readings, however, a majority of them are quite interesting, and if you at least skim all of them, you will be 100% fine. Make sure you stay on track of the readings, as it just makes the midterm (online) and final (online) easier to work through. Additionally, there are 2 one-page papers where you have to apply the vocab into it (very easy).
There are discussion sections, where your TA will go over the readings, so if you don't understand anything in the readings, it is usually explained in these sections. The lectures are prerecorded, however, he does hold one-hour live zoom sessions (not required to attend) that are EXTREMELY useful. He discusses exactly what will be on the online tests on the zoom call, so you know exactly what to study for. You can really tell that he wants his students to learn and will make you succeed in the class. I highly recommend this class if you want a light GE overall!!