She is a good professor. People say she yells a lot, but she is only emphasizing important points of her lecture, and you better right it down because it will get you points on the test. Overall, she is an effective teacher and you will learn a lot. However, the discussion sections are pretty useless (15% of grade) and the TAs make it harder than its supposed to be. Also, be prepared to hear her feminist viewpoint all throughout the quarter.

Although I have not gotten a grade yet, I thought Bays was a pretty good professor. The class was very interesting and so were the readings. However I did not find section that usefull, maybe because of my particular T.A. The exams were not hard at all and can be aced from a study guide given a week or so ahead of time. I would recommend the course!

I think Bays' lectures were rather unorganized. She does not include any powerpoint or graphics, she just sits there and lectures. I also had trouble following her train of thought, it seemed like some of her sentences would just start out of the blue like "And the fourth thing is..." The reading and textbook are pretty interesting, and I actually got a lot out of the class because of my TA and our discussions. Oh, and the midterm and final are not cumulative and they are total breeze.

I took Women Studies 10 with Bays and received an easy A+ in this class. Her lectures are very organized and she repeats herself a lot. Make sure you take notes because those are the ones you are going to study for the exams. She doesn't post anything online so go to class and try to stay awake. It will really help you, I almost didn't study at all at home because I remembered everything she said during class. The one thing you have to do is read some pretty tedious articles (some are interesting). You don't really have to read all that she assigns but only the most important ones, she says which ones these are or you will find out the week before the tests. She gives out a study guide and if you know the questions on the study guide/review, you will know the entire test. :)

Caution: she can be very moody and hates when people are late and when she discovers people haven't done their readings, it actually reached a point where I dreaded going to class in fear of her scolling us/me. If I was late, I didn't go to class at all. She wants the students to participate even if it's a class of about 250 students and gets mad if people don't answer her questions, also when people do answer her questions, she never hears what they say so they have to yell it over and over again. In my opinion, she should really leave the participation to the discussion sessions with the TAs.