Honestly, I and probably a lot of people came in expecting to learn about cults and mystics and oracles, but the majority of class is about Catholic saints (Saint Francis and Santa Teresa) who were considered heretics in their time but are a little unexpected. It does get to marginalized religions and witches later on, though.

This was my favorite class I took during my very first quarter at UCLA. Teo is an incredible lecturer and has a fascinating life story. Lectures are recorded and posted online in a timely manner, but this isn't a class you'll want to skip.
The workload is pretty light. There are three assignments for this class: a midterm due week 4, a second midterm due week 7 and a final exam. These are all essays, but the second midterm can be substituted for a performance based on the class materials during finals week. There are also weekly readings which are discussed in section every week, and participation and attendance are counted towards your grade. The readings aren't totally necessary for weekly discussion, but they're quite helpful when writing the essays. If you go to the Undergraduate Writing Center for essay feedback/help, you can get extra credit!
I have always loved history, but I'm sure that those who don't have a natural affinity for the topic will also have lots to gain from taking this class.

So I'm going to preface my entire review with this: if you're one of those people who show up the first day of class and then watch the recordings later on, you're doing yourself a serious disservice, and here's why.

Teo is genuinely one of the funniest, kindest, and most knowledgeable people I have ever met. He loves teaching, which is one of the reasons why his classes are so much better than other professors, because he is doing this out of enjoyment, not out of obligation. He goes out of his way to make sure that everyone understands the topics being discussed by allowing anyone to jump out with questions (in fact, he encourages it), which is such a refreshing thing to see.

There are very few assignments in this course, the two midterms, and then the final, so the workload is definitely not too much. It may seem like it is, but honestly you don't have to read every single additional reading, mainly just skim over each of them (although at some point you'll have to go back to certain ones for the midterm and final essays). He also gives the opportunity for the class to choose to do a performance or other creative piece instead of writing an essay for the second midterm (which I highly recommend! it was a lot of fun, my group and I did the "Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition" skit by Monty Python). Overall it doesn't take a lot to do well in this class, just take decent notes during lectures and try not to procrastinate too much on the essays, trust me it's more trouble than it's worth.

I will admit that I am a lover of history, one of the reasons I took this class. But I can assure anyone who is not will love the class just as much as I did. Teo always makes his lectures incredibly interesting, and he's very funny too! I honestly can't name a time that I was ever bored during his lectures.

Since this is already kind of long, all I can say is that this class, and Teo himself, are amazing and I honestly am so sad that it's already over. But because I loved it so much I am actually constantly on the lookout for his other classes that he teaches, just because I enjoy them so much.

I love the professor and found his lectures to be extremely entertaining. I took this in my first quarter of freshmen year and found his first and final lecture to be extremely impactful - I will probably remember them for the rest of my UCLA journey and hopefully for the rest of my life!

Having said that, I was only interested in the mystics and witches portion of the class, and the rest of the content was not as interesting to me. So I would definitely recommend for students to check the syllabus content to ensure that it is aligned to their interests. In addition, it was sometimes difficult to hear what the professor was saying, and his slides were not very helpful, which made it hard to tell what he was saying at times.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed this class very much and definitely learned a lot from it!

One of the best professors I've ever had. Highly, highly recommend taking any class you can with Teo.

Selling the course reader!
https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/**********41852/