Speer is just a great professor! He always tries to make concepts/readings as understandable as possible. The workload is really manageable and it is not too much. As long as you the readings and take notes you can definitely get an A. Also, Speer is a very nice and approachable professor who goes above and beyond to help students understand the materials!
I would definitely take another class with him.

I find that Speer is not the worse professor to have, with lectures that are easy to follow. However, the style of having a midterm, 8-page paper due in Week 9 followed by a final in Week 10 did not make sense to me. I wish that instead of a final we only had the paper or vice versa. The format of the midterm and final is divided into two parts: multiple choice then short essay answers (about two.) The multiple-choice questions felt unnecessarily tricky, and as someone who did the readings and took notes, I was annoyed that several responses felt like trick questions. On that note, there are multiple lengthy readings required with weekly homework assignments (answering about 6-8 questions on the week's reading with a 150-word response to each.) I did not strictly adhere to the word count and was not penalized for this, but this depends on the TA. I think what made the class manageable to me is having a really good TA to break down the concepts, so I have to admit I'm hesitant to take another class with Speer without guaranteed additional help. (Approaching him for questions can be intimidating.)

Professor Speer's class was by far one of the easiest classes I've ever taken. He puts all of the slides online and gives study guides for the paper, midterm, and final (which is non cumulative). We also had one paper, but he gives you basically free reign on the topic and how you want to go about writing it.
There is weekly reading and questions which can get pretty dense, but it's pretty interesting. It's clear that he's passionate about sociology and clearly explains all concepts during lecture. Participation counts; you have to participate three times during the quarter to get full credit.

Personally, I enjoyed this class. However, I can see why people did not. The actual content of the class, while easy to understand, is pretty boring, which makes lectures very boring as well. However, I wouldn't really blame this on Speer himself, since no matter how you teach it, the concept of "Comparative and Historical methods" is going to be boring nonetheless. He did try to compensate for it, such as through interesting readings, case studies, and him being funny. The final essay, while 10 pages, allows you to choose any topic and the TAs grade it leniently. The tests are also really easy as long as you study and pay attention in class. Just a heads up that the further the course goes, the readings do become a bit longer and more difficult to understand, but they're still manageable. Honestly the only complaints I have are whenever you ask Speer a question, he sometimes does come off as a bit sassy (as others have noted), but IMO he's just blunt like that and means no harm. Also, he's becoming a bit paranoid of AI and will go on random rants about it (he also makes you do your work on a google doc so he can see your version history). However, since this class does not have any math whatsoever and it is very easy, I highly recommend it to get your methods requirement done. Note: speer says taking sociol 101 before this class is "recommended" but I didn't take it yet and still found this course really easy so you should be fine

Speer is a professor that cares a lot about the subject. Take that as you will. I find that when professors care a little TOO much about their subject they get mad/upset when students don't feel the same way (don't put in a lot of effort, show up to lectures, make the whole class their life). He tries to be helpful and I think that he does an okay job at that. His tests are structured in a very indirect way. It's the type of test that tries to trick students by make the questions trick questions or just SLIGHTLY off from the actual answers. He is also extremely sassy when you try to ask questions. It's not very welcoming. SO, although he just cares so much and in turn wants to be helpful, the way he structures the class is tricky, paranoid, and just doing too much.

One of the best classes I have taken at UCLA. So relevant to current events and so interesting to learn about the evolution of race and how ultimately race is socially constructed. Not to mention my TA was actually the GOAT. Joauquin is the best if you can have him as a TA, you should and you will be blessed

Overall, this was a pretty good class. Political power, wealth inequality, gender inequality, etc are all discussed and honestly most of it you probably already know. You have weekly homework assignments where you have to do the readings and answer around 8 written questions, but they were graded on completion. Midterm and final were honestly really easy, for both it was 20 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions. The only thing that was slightly tricky was the final paper where it was based on one of the readings and you had to agree or disagree with it, but it was nothing too bad as long as you take your time on it. Professor Speer is so helpful and his lectures are very clear and understandable, you can tell he takes the time to make sure his students succeed :)
also ta benjamin is the besttt