I'm not sure when it was changed, but this class is an online format, which I love because it saved me a lot of time going to and from campus. Each week, there are a couple lecture videos posted on CCLE that you have to watch (the average watch time is 1-2.5 hours). However, I always watched during meals on 2x speed so it really saved me a lot of time. The readings are kind of heavy but you just have to find time to do it before your discussion section. Also, your TA will post discussion questions for the week that you should look over before your discussion section (participation is a big part of your grade). The workload isn't too bad honestly. There are three assignments: video or podcast (20%), digital museum exhibit (30%), and final reflection paper (5%). The video was not too bad - you interview a female and try tie in what you've been talking about in class about Michael Mann's IEMP powers to someone's real life experiences and analyze that in a video. The digital museum exhibit is a lot more work because you have an individual portion and a group portion. The invidual portion is researching about a female ruler in the ancient times and finding three artifacts that represent her. The group portion is that you all have rulers in vaguely the same region and you write an essay about them (regions like Egypt, China, Greece, Mesopotamia, India). I would say to utilize TA office hours before you turn in the big assignments to check them over and make sure you did not miss anything. Also, the one quart meeting with Professor Cooney is pretty entertaining, I would recommend going. I agree with the sentiment of many other students: she does not really listen or understand your question, but rather goes on a rant (kinda), and when you get frustrated that she's not answering your questions, it's like she is like "don't worry, I know you'd get angry. But that's what I want you to do and that's how you can make change in the world"?? I'm not sure what's going on with her logic but she just blatantly does not understand students' questions so if you do ask her a question, don't take her response to heart. It sounds she's gone through some things in life so she just gives off a bitter vibe of "nothing phases me anymore" and "you women think you're making progress but you're actually not". It was kind of disheartening to hear honestly. Anyways, you don't have much interaction with her besides watching her lecture videos. I think your experience in the course is very much guided by who your TA is.

I'm writing this review around Week 9 so I don't have a grade yet, but I will update it when I get one. I wanted to point out something that I didn't see in her other reviews: Cooney straight up isn't educated about a lot of the subject material she's speaking on. She brings a lot of scientifically unsubstantiated and frankly misogynistic ideas into the course. She'll say "science shows" and then fail to provide actual scientific sources. Coming from a research background, it is also genuinely painful to see her misinterpreting the neuroscience studies that she posts.
Cooney is also not receptive to feedback—as others have pointed out, she will not listen to people who offer constructive feedback, even if it's worded in the most polite and concessive way possible. Her attitude is a bit bizarre. She always wants to challenge students that ask her questions even if it means deliberately misunderstanding them.
The one positive point to the class is that there is no midterm and final anymore, as you may see in earlier reviews, so the readings are even less important. However, the paper is super heavily weighted and there are some weird grading things. Assignments that are worth 10% of your grade are 10 points, 15% of your grade are 15 points, etc. so if you get a 9/10 on one assignment you've lost 1% of your grade. It's pretty harsh.

It was a pretty easy class overall. There's assigned videos and readings for each week, but you can get away with not reading them. Participation is pretty important, but as long as you say something once every two weeks, answer the weekly discussion question, and go to the 2 mandatory meetings with the prof, it should be alright. Final was a 10 page paper, and it was graded pretty harshly in my opinion. Recommend to take it if you want a fairly easy ge.

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 castilloamanda1997@gmail.com!

This class gave me anxiety. Your grade is completely dependent on your TA. My TA, Vera, was nice, but disorganized and took forever to respond to emails. She also incorrectly reported our grades as all F's and I'm still trying to get the Dean's honor list notation on my transcript from this quarter. Research paper was kinda hard. Discussion boards are a must.

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 evelynwan@gmail.com 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)

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: (213) 352-7569
or
email: hakter13@g.ucla.edu

good luck with the class

Profesor Cooney is one of the most engaging lecturers and the course content is so interesting!! However I bought all the books and didn’t crack open a single one all quarter long. I really thought it would come back to bite me and it totally didn’t. Going to lectures and engaging in discussions are the best way to prepare. Cooney got rid of the midterm and gave the option to do a 10 minute paper or a 10 minute podcast. I picked the podcast which turned out to essentially be an entire paper plus recording/sound editing/mixing and while it was rewarding it was very time consuming. Stick to the paper if you just want to be in and out.

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.
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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 (925)-698-1552 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!)

Loved the material of this class, but it does come with a LOT of reading.

Cleopatra -$4
The Woman Who Would be King - $10
The World Until Yesterday - $12

email for books: mandri99@gmail.com