Charly Coleman

History of France till the French revolution.

We covered a great deal of ground, and I feel like I walked away with a more developed sense of broad developments in history as a discipline within the last few decades + a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives that I was previously unfamiliar with.

Great class if you want to get an A without doing any readings. All of his essay questions he basically answers verbatim in class. No participation is counted. Honestly felt like a STEM class with how he just sat in the front and lectured off his prepared packet the whole time with little *meaningful* contribution from students.

This class exposed us to a wide range of historical texts and the methdology used in writing about history.

Standard amount of reading. 2 essays. miderm and final.

It was a wonderful tour around the ways of doing history, especially in early modern Southeast Asia and France. Tonnes of lessons have been learnt.

Awful professor. The way he conducts his classes makes it very anti-discussion. He spends the whole class reading off of his notes and when someone veers off of them, his responses are vague and often don't make any sense. Frequently, students would ask him questions or push back on a point, to which he quickly dismisses them without a proper explanation. Despite this being a "contemporary" civilizations class, he actively discourages discussion of contemporary issues. However, his class is easy in the sense that writing assignments don't require any critical thinking. Simply regurgitate exactly what he said during class and you'll get an A. And in class, simply agree with him and repeat back what he just said to you to get participation points.

Practical and theoretical methods for doing history. Not all aspects of historical craft are addressed, nor are classical traditions explicitly invoked, but it is a good survey course in various methods in history and is a wonderful community building and exercise in critical thinking and self-awareness for those students willing to invest.

Reading is normal (it's CC), he provides very useful feedback on essay drafts.

I learned much more about other fields than I expected, though I learned very little that will actually be of use to me in my own work. This course was mostly effective in familiarizing me with the work of my cohort and the dimensions of East Asian methods and historiography.