One of the best profs at UCLA! Prof Timmermans is very knowledgable and if you are willing to learn and actually study to gain knowledge, take his class! It's truly informative and covers lots of subjects
and not only death. His unique approach to the exams makes you think and analyze as well as connect social facts to certain events. It's really surprising that people find his class 'unclear" since Timmermans always dedicated the beginning of the lecture to discussing how he wants us to write the midterm and the final(which are 10-page max essays)...Take him if you're willing to acquire new skills in a sociology major and develop new perspectives.

I've only left good reviews for professors and am usually skeptical of negative ones...but I HAVE to let other people know that I wouldn't recommend this class. Timmermans is exceedingly unclear (he did not even have a proper syllabus) and even when responding to the most DIRECT questions, he skirts around giving an actual answer. I'd say the workload is demanding...4 books, at LEAST one or two 20-page-long readings assigned for every class (which must ALL be referenced in the 10-page-long midterm and final papers) - come on.
The class is now called "death, dying, and afterlife" (no longer death, suicide, and trauma), but we haven't talked about the afterlife at ALL! And it seems that we always talk about suicide anyways. Especially Durkheim. Not sure why it was even renamed.
Timmermans is a charismatic guy with interesting lectures, but consensus among my classmates were that his expectations were always either unclear or unreasonable. Even the TA's rolled their eyes at these things.

Basic rundown: My favorite lecturer at UCLA. you can tell that he is extremely passionate and knowledgable of the topic. He makes the dark topics around suicide/death/trauma extremely interesting
Quizzes (2) 20 questions multiple choice (if you did bad you can write a 10 page paper to make it up)
-the quizzes were not easy, got a 50% and a 75% on them and I read each reading and attended all lectures. the make up papers saved me.
Final: take home essay - you have one week to do it (DO NOT SLACK)
OVERALL: even though this class was on the difficult class the content and the professor made it worth it. you should read the articles as this helps alot - but only going to the lecture could get you a B in the class

This class is awesome. You truly learn a lot. Professor Timmermans is funny, smart and makes his class very interesting. His quizzes are challenging but do able. He assings many readings but you can skim and be okay with just grasping the main idea . His midterm/final are 10-pg essays but he is clear and they are doable with all the content one learns and we can use his slides and notes in the essays

This class can be very interesting, but Timmermans makes it quite hard to grasp. There are two quizzes (each worth 10%) the average on both of them was a C-. No one got 100%. They were incredibly detailed and he didn't give us any kind of a study guide for them. The midterm and final were take home papers. They were 10 pages each. They are fairly broad and can be difficult to get to the point. I got an A on both the midterm and the final but since I got a C on the quizzes, i ended up with a B+ in the class. If you take this class, be ready for the quizzes.

I feel that he could have been more specific about what he wanted from his students in regards to quiz expectations, paper expectations, and grading. Otherwise, he was an entertaining and kind professor.

This was one of the most frustrating out of the classes I've taken; little steps on clarity, but the material was very interesting.

Two "reaction" papers, two quizzes, midterm and final paper, and TONS of reading.

This class had 2 one page write ups (reaction papers) which everyone recieved 5/5 on as long as they wrote something on a piece of paper, 2 quizzes that were both out of 20 points, the midterm, the final, and discussion attendance/participation. Lectures are interesting and cover the material that will be on the quizzes, but Timmermans does not take attendance and often students miss class and review his PowerPoints that are posted online after lecture. The quizzes were very difficult but a 10 page paper on the readings can be written to make up points for a quiz that a student performed poorly on. The midterm and final are both a 10 page paper on a prompt with multiple dynamics that cover information from readings. Three textbooks were required for this course (one being Timmermans' own), while the homework's articles are posted online. Overall, this class was interesting and the TA's are also awesome!

Timmermans looks like a morbid version of where's waldo, and in his death, trauma, and society class you start to feel that way. His Belgium-accent and slightly off-colored humor is characteristic of a man who would spend years in a medical examiner's office, watching countless autopsies. Ultimately, Timmermans is a smart ethnographer, his miderm and final are do-able if you do the reading.