Professor

Kathlyn Cooney

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3.9
Overall Ratings
Based on 129 Users
Easiness 2.9 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Workload 2.8 / 5 How light the workload is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Clarity 3.9 / 5 How clear the professor is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Helpfulness 3.7 / 5 How helpful the professor is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

Reviews (129)

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May 10, 2017
Quarter: Winter 2017
Grade: B

This class has good reviews, but Professor Cooney probably writes them herself. This is genuinely the worst class I've ever taken in my entire life. I am a south campus major and this class caused me more stress than my other classes.
My TA, @Dani Candelora, was absolutely horrible. She accused me of academic dishonesty and was very impolite and rude to her students. That being said, the grade you get depends entirely on your TA.
Cooney is very pretentious and only talks about her own experiences, not what we need to know for the midterm and final. Pretty much half the class is pointless because very few of the lectures pertain to what she actually tests you on.
There were a lot of students who tried to kiss up to Cooney and talk about their own views on feminism, which none of the other students actually care about.
The lectures are incredibly boring and truly pointless to attend. The final paper is ridiculous because no one teaches you how to do it, it's extremely long, and the process of choosing a topic is difficult. The topic she suggests are too specific and obscure, and the TAs claim most topics are too broad.
She doesn't know much about India, China, and Persia but still tried to lecture about it. It looked extremely unprofessional.
No matter what any of the other reviews say, I promise you will regret taking this class. It is absolutely horrible.

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AN N EA 15W
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Dec. 15, 2021
Quarter: Fall 2021
Grade: A+

If you're looking for an easy GE this class might not be it simply because of the amount of writing you have to do. Although the material itself isn't hard, there's atleast one thing always due at the end of the week. There are weekly 1 page "activity journals" that you have to complete by Friday 11:59 pm, alongside any other assignments, and often you had to have watched the lectures in order to answer the prompt.

Some of the readings are short but most of them are pretty long, usually 20+ pages. I got by without really reading anything, besides skimming for quotes when I needed them for the paper/weekly activities. Watching the pre-recorded lectures and TA videos are required for participation, as well as having two zoom meetings with your TA. Alonside the weekly activity journals is a 3-4 page paper on Michael Mann's book on "Sources of Power" (due week 3), which is a topic you pretty much have to deal with the rest of the quarter. A general consensus the class had on Michael Mann's book is that he talks a lot but says nothing, where he goes on long tangents that aren't always entirely related to what the TAs are looking for. You will have to implement Michael Mann's IEMP model into your research paper/podcast.

There is a project that can either be done in paper or podcast form. There was very little guidance/detailed instructions on how to do the podcast, and because this class is online/asynchronous, it is hard to get help on it. Thus, I did the paper and I will only give details on that. The final research paper is due at the end of week 10/beginning of finals week depending on your TA. It has four parts to it. The first part is introduced around week 4 in which you have to start an annotated bibliography and begin forming your preliminary thesis/research argument. The annotated bibliography needs 4 primary and 4 secondary sources, each with a summary of what it is, who its written by, how is it useful for your research, etc. This portion was due week 6 at 11:59pm and is 5% of the total grade.

The second part of the final paper is your rough draft, which must be 10-12 pages in length, and must include a bibliography and a "figures sheet," which is pretty much where you put images of primary sources you used, considering many primary sources you will use consist of ancient relics like tombs, stone carvings, etc. This portion is 10% and due week 8 at 11:59pm. Week 8 is also the only week where there was no activity journal due.

The 3rd portion of the final paper is a peer review due week 9 at 11:59pm and is part of the participation grade. The 4th portion is the final/revised draft due around week 10 at 11:59pm and is worth 30%. A recording of you presenting your research is the final assignment, and is worth 5%.

I personally did not read or buy the professor's book. She also includes online access to other required readings, but her book is not one of them. Professor Cooney's lectures are engaging and she is a great presenter. However, there isn't much guidance on how to formulate your research psper, but it helps to base it on how she dissects each ancient society and what it means for a woman's access to power there. She has a total of two live events, and attending them in full gives one extra credit point for each event.

Overall grading breakdown:
Participation 20%
Reading Journal 20%
Assignment #1- Mann Synthesis 10%
Assignment #2- Research Paper (45% total)
• Part I- Thesis & Annotated Bibliography (5%)
• Part II- Rough Draft (10%)
• Part III- Peer Review (part of participation)
• Part IV- Final Draft (30%)
Assignment #3- Final Presentation/Podcast 5%

Depending on your TA, the grading can be strict or lenient. I had Aaron Samuels; although he can be a bit curt, I found him to be pretty chill and a lenient grader conpared to other TA's. Overall, the class material can be interesting but I wouldn't go out of my way to take it.

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Nov. 15, 2017
Quarter: Winter 2015
Grade: A

I have all the Cleopatra and The Woman Who Would be King textbooks for this class in practically new condition for $10. Email me if interested. *************.

I would highly recommend this class! She is a really cool, fun professor and the material is really interesting. I would also say that it isn't particularly hard to get an A in the class if you study!

Helpful?

1 1 Please log in to provide feedback.
Dec. 22, 2023
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: N/A

Good class to take if you want something easy to satisfy a GE requirement. It was asynchronous, so I didn’t have any interaction with the professor or the TA, although it is offered if you want that. We just had one quiz each week which was based on the content of that week’s lecture videos, and two reflection assignments due throughout the quarter. There was a midterm and final that were each two essay questions, 500 words each. Not a difficult class, just do the work and you will do well.

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0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Nov. 24, 2023
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: A

Honestly, I think this class is pretty decent. I signed up for it since I needed a GE and saw it was asynchronous so I figured it would be easy. There was definitely more work than I expected but it was completely manageable if I worked on it throughout the week; I would not recommend waiting to work on it until the last day since there are a couple of hours of videos and then a couple of hours of reading usually as well. Content-wise, it was so-so. I know some people have said that there were pieces of information in the class that were just flat-out wrong but honestly, I don't have enough experience with the subjects to confirm/deny that. I will say though that there were a couple of statements that made me pause and I disagreed with (more so the interpretation of the information we were learning about rather than the information itself). Homework-wise, as I said there was a good bit of homework throughout the week but if you start working on it at the beginning of the week it's completely manageable. There are also weekly quizzes that I found very easy. If you actually watch the videos and do the readings (which counts for your participation points anyway), you should be able to get a B on each one easily if not an A. Otherwise, there are two reflections, a mid-term, and a final in the class. All of them are pretty straightforward and you're given a week to work on them and it's not hard to score well on them as long as you can make some sort of argument and meet the word count. There is not really any interaction with Prof. Cooney herself, only the prerecorded videos of her and the two times each quarter she has an info-session where you can ask questions. All of your interactions with instructors in this class will mainly be through your TA and the head TA and in my experience, they are pretty good and have fair expectations when it comes to grading, submissions, etc. Overall, if you like history or want an easy-ish GE, this is a decent class. It doesn't take much effort and you can honestly BS your way through some of it.

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0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Aug. 20, 2019
Quarter: Winter 2019
Grade: B

I am selling the books

The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations
The Woman Who Would Be King
Cleopatra- A Biography

All in great condition for $6 each

Email me *************!

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
June 8, 2019
Quarter: Winter 2019
Grade: A

I took the course as a hybrid meaning that all my lectures were posted online and I only had to attend discussion once a week. The lectures were incredibly interesting and easy to follow as she presented all the material as a story rather than just reducing history into dates and names. In terms of grading, depending on your TA the essays varied in difficulty but as long as you go to office hours to figure out what your TA is looking for, you can get an A!

I'm selling all the required books as a bundle for a total of $28! Email me at ************* if you're interested!
Books:
-The Woman Who Would be King
-Cleopatra-A Biography
-The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations
-The World Until Yesterday (PDF doc)

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Dec. 19, 2018
Quarter: Winter 2018
Grade: A

When taking Prof. Cooney's class, it is important to consider her as a professor and the class itself as two separate aspects. She herself is engaging and entertaining as a lecturer, she speaks very informally and in layman's terms, so you feel like you're having more of a conversation than a boring drawn out textbook narration. However, since her classes are very based on her lectures and speaking coverage, its very inconsistent. She is definitely knowledgeable and the class does try to cover various subregions, but you can definitely tell that her focus and interests are heavy towards some, so I felt like some days of the class were just not necessary. Also, due to some day offs in the general quarter's calendar in addition to some lectures going into the following ones, we were off schedule according to the syllabus and the last civilizations (China/India) were definitely just squeezed in. The main assignment in this class is a research essay or podcast (something they were testing out as an option my quarter) that you have until the end of the quarter to submit, so your personal time was more focused on whatever you chose and likely didn't really think deeply towards the others. It is necessary to pay attention though because the final itself were 2 critical analysis essays of any region, but she gave the possible prompts ahead of time so you can review for yourself. Overall, a good class that doesnt take a lot of stress if you can time manage yourself and not be too reliant on in-class/TA help. They didn't regulate how TA's prepared you for the essay writing, so others had more feedback and mini due dates while others were kind of just a ask-me-if-you-need-help. I ended up switching discussions to have a more helpful TA and that surely made a difference in the course of the class.
-
Selling required texts:
Cleopatra: A Biography by Duane W. Roller
The Woman who Would be King by Kara Cooney
The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond
text ********** that you're inquiring about AN N EA 15
(Kept the books because I bought them, but definitely not necessary to buy full price to do well in the class!)

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
March 31, 2018
Quarter: Winter 2018
Grade: I

Selling The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations ($10) and The World Until Yesterday ($15), both needed for the class. **********

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
March 26, 2019
Quarter: Winter 2018
Grade: B+

The lectures were really interesting but she wasn't able to cover China because she spent a lot of time talking about Egypt (her specialty). There's a lot of readings assigned and then there's the research project which is a pretty heavy load for a GE course and you can't really use the reading material for the class as a source because they want new sources. There's no midterm but there is a final and she'll post a list of possible questions she might ask and choose maybe 4 from the list. I just studied the answers for those questions the night before and did fine for the final.

Selling "Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations" textbook
text: **********
or
email: *************

good luck with the class

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
AN N EA 15
Quarter: Winter 2017
Grade: B
May 10, 2017

This class has good reviews, but Professor Cooney probably writes them herself. This is genuinely the worst class I've ever taken in my entire life. I am a south campus major and this class caused me more stress than my other classes.
My TA, @Dani Candelora, was absolutely horrible. She accused me of academic dishonesty and was very impolite and rude to her students. That being said, the grade you get depends entirely on your TA.
Cooney is very pretentious and only talks about her own experiences, not what we need to know for the midterm and final. Pretty much half the class is pointless because very few of the lectures pertain to what she actually tests you on.
There were a lot of students who tried to kiss up to Cooney and talk about their own views on feminism, which none of the other students actually care about.
The lectures are incredibly boring and truly pointless to attend. The final paper is ridiculous because no one teaches you how to do it, it's extremely long, and the process of choosing a topic is difficult. The topic she suggests are too specific and obscure, and the TAs claim most topics are too broad.
She doesn't know much about India, China, and Persia but still tried to lecture about it. It looked extremely unprofessional.
No matter what any of the other reviews say, I promise you will regret taking this class. It is absolutely horrible.

Helpful?

6 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
AN N EA 15W
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Fall 2021
Grade: A+
Dec. 15, 2021

If you're looking for an easy GE this class might not be it simply because of the amount of writing you have to do. Although the material itself isn't hard, there's atleast one thing always due at the end of the week. There are weekly 1 page "activity journals" that you have to complete by Friday 11:59 pm, alongside any other assignments, and often you had to have watched the lectures in order to answer the prompt.

Some of the readings are short but most of them are pretty long, usually 20+ pages. I got by without really reading anything, besides skimming for quotes when I needed them for the paper/weekly activities. Watching the pre-recorded lectures and TA videos are required for participation, as well as having two zoom meetings with your TA. Alonside the weekly activity journals is a 3-4 page paper on Michael Mann's book on "Sources of Power" (due week 3), which is a topic you pretty much have to deal with the rest of the quarter. A general consensus the class had on Michael Mann's book is that he talks a lot but says nothing, where he goes on long tangents that aren't always entirely related to what the TAs are looking for. You will have to implement Michael Mann's IEMP model into your research paper/podcast.

There is a project that can either be done in paper or podcast form. There was very little guidance/detailed instructions on how to do the podcast, and because this class is online/asynchronous, it is hard to get help on it. Thus, I did the paper and I will only give details on that. The final research paper is due at the end of week 10/beginning of finals week depending on your TA. It has four parts to it. The first part is introduced around week 4 in which you have to start an annotated bibliography and begin forming your preliminary thesis/research argument. The annotated bibliography needs 4 primary and 4 secondary sources, each with a summary of what it is, who its written by, how is it useful for your research, etc. This portion was due week 6 at 11:59pm and is 5% of the total grade.

The second part of the final paper is your rough draft, which must be 10-12 pages in length, and must include a bibliography and a "figures sheet," which is pretty much where you put images of primary sources you used, considering many primary sources you will use consist of ancient relics like tombs, stone carvings, etc. This portion is 10% and due week 8 at 11:59pm. Week 8 is also the only week where there was no activity journal due.

The 3rd portion of the final paper is a peer review due week 9 at 11:59pm and is part of the participation grade. The 4th portion is the final/revised draft due around week 10 at 11:59pm and is worth 30%. A recording of you presenting your research is the final assignment, and is worth 5%.

I personally did not read or buy the professor's book. She also includes online access to other required readings, but her book is not one of them. Professor Cooney's lectures are engaging and she is a great presenter. However, there isn't much guidance on how to formulate your research psper, but it helps to base it on how she dissects each ancient society and what it means for a woman's access to power there. She has a total of two live events, and attending them in full gives one extra credit point for each event.

Overall grading breakdown:
Participation 20%
Reading Journal 20%
Assignment #1- Mann Synthesis 10%
Assignment #2- Research Paper (45% total)
• Part I- Thesis & Annotated Bibliography (5%)
• Part II- Rough Draft (10%)
• Part III- Peer Review (part of participation)
• Part IV- Final Draft (30%)
Assignment #3- Final Presentation/Podcast 5%

Depending on your TA, the grading can be strict or lenient. I had Aaron Samuels; although he can be a bit curt, I found him to be pretty chill and a lenient grader conpared to other TA's. Overall, the class material can be interesting but I wouldn't go out of my way to take it.

Helpful?

3 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
AN N EA 15
Quarter: Winter 2015
Grade: A
Nov. 15, 2017

I have all the Cleopatra and The Woman Who Would be King textbooks for this class in practically new condition for $10. Email me if interested. *************.

I would highly recommend this class! She is a really cool, fun professor and the material is really interesting. I would also say that it isn't particularly hard to get an A in the class if you study!

Helpful?

1 1 Please log in to provide feedback.
AN N EA 15
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: N/A
Dec. 22, 2023

Good class to take if you want something easy to satisfy a GE requirement. It was asynchronous, so I didn’t have any interaction with the professor or the TA, although it is offered if you want that. We just had one quiz each week which was based on the content of that week’s lecture videos, and two reflection assignments due throughout the quarter. There was a midterm and final that were each two essay questions, 500 words each. Not a difficult class, just do the work and you will do well.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
AN N EA 15
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: A
Nov. 24, 2023

Honestly, I think this class is pretty decent. I signed up for it since I needed a GE and saw it was asynchronous so I figured it would be easy. There was definitely more work than I expected but it was completely manageable if I worked on it throughout the week; I would not recommend waiting to work on it until the last day since there are a couple of hours of videos and then a couple of hours of reading usually as well. Content-wise, it was so-so. I know some people have said that there were pieces of information in the class that were just flat-out wrong but honestly, I don't have enough experience with the subjects to confirm/deny that. I will say though that there were a couple of statements that made me pause and I disagreed with (more so the interpretation of the information we were learning about rather than the information itself). Homework-wise, as I said there was a good bit of homework throughout the week but if you start working on it at the beginning of the week it's completely manageable. There are also weekly quizzes that I found very easy. If you actually watch the videos and do the readings (which counts for your participation points anyway), you should be able to get a B on each one easily if not an A. Otherwise, there are two reflections, a mid-term, and a final in the class. All of them are pretty straightforward and you're given a week to work on them and it's not hard to score well on them as long as you can make some sort of argument and meet the word count. There is not really any interaction with Prof. Cooney herself, only the prerecorded videos of her and the two times each quarter she has an info-session where you can ask questions. All of your interactions with instructors in this class will mainly be through your TA and the head TA and in my experience, they are pretty good and have fair expectations when it comes to grading, submissions, etc. Overall, if you like history or want an easy-ish GE, this is a decent class. It doesn't take much effort and you can honestly BS your way through some of it.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
AN N EA 15
Quarter: Winter 2019
Grade: B
Aug. 20, 2019

I am selling the books

The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations
The Woman Who Would Be King
Cleopatra- A Biography

All in great condition for $6 each

Email me *************!

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
AN N EA 15
Quarter: Winter 2019
Grade: A
June 8, 2019

I took the course as a hybrid meaning that all my lectures were posted online and I only had to attend discussion once a week. The lectures were incredibly interesting and easy to follow as she presented all the material as a story rather than just reducing history into dates and names. In terms of grading, depending on your TA the essays varied in difficulty but as long as you go to office hours to figure out what your TA is looking for, you can get an A!

I'm selling all the required books as a bundle for a total of $28! Email me at ************* if you're interested!
Books:
-The Woman Who Would be King
-Cleopatra-A Biography
-The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations
-The World Until Yesterday (PDF doc)

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
AN N EA 15
Quarter: Winter 2018
Grade: A
Dec. 19, 2018

When taking Prof. Cooney's class, it is important to consider her as a professor and the class itself as two separate aspects. She herself is engaging and entertaining as a lecturer, she speaks very informally and in layman's terms, so you feel like you're having more of a conversation than a boring drawn out textbook narration. However, since her classes are very based on her lectures and speaking coverage, its very inconsistent. She is definitely knowledgeable and the class does try to cover various subregions, but you can definitely tell that her focus and interests are heavy towards some, so I felt like some days of the class were just not necessary. Also, due to some day offs in the general quarter's calendar in addition to some lectures going into the following ones, we were off schedule according to the syllabus and the last civilizations (China/India) were definitely just squeezed in. The main assignment in this class is a research essay or podcast (something they were testing out as an option my quarter) that you have until the end of the quarter to submit, so your personal time was more focused on whatever you chose and likely didn't really think deeply towards the others. It is necessary to pay attention though because the final itself were 2 critical analysis essays of any region, but she gave the possible prompts ahead of time so you can review for yourself. Overall, a good class that doesnt take a lot of stress if you can time manage yourself and not be too reliant on in-class/TA help. They didn't regulate how TA's prepared you for the essay writing, so others had more feedback and mini due dates while others were kind of just a ask-me-if-you-need-help. I ended up switching discussions to have a more helpful TA and that surely made a difference in the course of the class.
-
Selling required texts:
Cleopatra: A Biography by Duane W. Roller
The Woman who Would be King by Kara Cooney
The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond
text ********** that you're inquiring about AN N EA 15
(Kept the books because I bought them, but definitely not necessary to buy full price to do well in the class!)

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
AN N EA 15
Quarter: Winter 2018
Grade: I
March 31, 2018

Selling The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations ($10) and The World Until Yesterday ($15), both needed for the class. **********

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
AN N EA 15
Quarter: Winter 2018
Grade: B+
March 26, 2019

The lectures were really interesting but she wasn't able to cover China because she spent a lot of time talking about Egypt (her specialty). There's a lot of readings assigned and then there's the research project which is a pretty heavy load for a GE course and you can't really use the reading material for the class as a source because they want new sources. There's no midterm but there is a final and she'll post a list of possible questions she might ask and choose maybe 4 from the list. I just studied the answers for those questions the night before and did fine for the final.

Selling "Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations" textbook
text: **********
or
email: *************

good luck with the class

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
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