professor handler is a funny, chill, and rightfully passionate guy. his jokes and small stories were always enjoyable in class. however, truth be told i missed a little less than half of the classes, and when i attended i usually did work for other classes. this was such an easy class for me and i probably spent only 1-3 hrs right before quizzes and still aced all of them. i don't think i ever got lower than a 90 on a quiz. the class will be much easier if you understand the basics of racism, societal injustices, etc.. its a good and easy class for sure. i got away with not needing to read most of the articles however i also know someone else is the class struggled more than i did. the class is much easier if you're better at making arguments rather than straight memorizing -- although both together is ideal for the class

Handler is a good guy — openly liberal and controversial, but very thought-provoking. Class is graded by half-hour handwritten quizzes and a final. Drop the lowest two quizzes. Usually, quizzes consist of comparing quotes from similar readings, but the final is a little more challenging. It's a class where you definitely don't have to go to lecture because he posts the reading notes, and they will definitely suffice for the quizzes, but I'd recommend it if you're not going to do the readings. They serve as a solid supplement, but often consist of Handler ranting and telling stories for 50 minutes. An A is very achievable, but you do need a 95. Recommend for the living systems requirement; it's one of those classes everyone deserves to experience at least once.

This class was great. You have a few readings each class, but he posts his own notes on the readings each week and goes over them in class, so you don't even really have to read them. There are six quizzes, five of them are just answering 2-3 questions in a few paragraphs and the final one was take home and just two mini essays. He doesn't do attendance, but if you just go to class and listen to what he's saying, you will be fine for all of the work. He is very liberal on essentially every single topic, but he was very open to hearing from the other side. He often opened up lecture to questions and wanted people to engage in what we were talking about as a group. Overall, the class was super easy, but I still feel like I got a lot out of it, just show up and listen.

Professor is a good person. Classes sometimes boring, but it felt reasonable. Class was not too terribly difficult. Readings are extremely skippable if you go to lectures. Notes on readings are provided which are 90% of quizzes and final, although lectures help. Open note online final for me. Reasonable difficulty.

This was a great course! It had a very manageable workload, especially as a first-year. To be honest, I pretty much stopped doing the readings after about 2 weeks, and just went to the lectures and still got an A. We did in-person written responses as "quizzes," where the prompts really just meant to test our understanding of the unit. Professor Handler went over most of the readings in lecture, and provided his notes online for many of them as well, so the readings weren't super critical. Definitely don't buy the textbook. However, there were some units where it definitely would have helped if I did the readings, so I'd really recommend doing all the work that you can. I mostly just skimmed them, but I did notice they were a lot more helpful for the quizzes when I actually read them thoroughly and took notes. A lot were really long and confusing though. #tCFS24

This class felt like just regurgitating Mr. Handler’s opinion on quizzes, and then the TAs grading harshly, and that is all we were graded on. No essays, no participation, no projects because of worries about ChatGPT. The quiz-only format made it incredibly hard for me to not only synthesize the material for myself but also to get a good grade.

For the lectures, he would project the PDFs of the readings and repeat the same ideas excessively, which made class boring. Mr. Handler’s a funny guy, but I was not a huge fan of this class.

This course assigns way too many readings to the point that it is almost impossible to read every single thing assigned. However, you will do fine in the class if you keep up with the notes that the professor posts and at least skim over the reading or search up a summary of the main themes. The professor mentioned multiple times that students disliked him for being too far left on the political spectrum, but I didn't notice anything extreme - he just shamed racists and anti-vaxxers which I think is pretty fair. The lectures aren't that useful and are also quite boring so it is not a must for you to attend. Discussion is also very useless because all that happens is other students share their thoughts on the readings and you do not go over anything new, but unfortunately attendance and participation are taken note of.

This is the single most skippable class I've ever taken at UVA. Handler is impossible to pay attention to. It seems like there is little of value he says during any given class period. When I do show up to class, I realize I've done it for the principle of not wanting to skip class rather than actually learning anything from the lecture. The grading on the essays seems pretty arbitrary. Handler is definitely a nice guy and an interesting person to talk to 1-on-1 but I don't think he's a particularly good lecturer. I would certainly not recommend this class other than it being a filler class for non-western that requires minimal work.

I highly recommend this course, especially if you need something to meet gen ed requirements. Professor Handler is a very engaging lecturer, and I always felt like I left class with a better understanding of the readings and the ability to apply them to life outside the classroom. He teaches anthropology in a way that is easy to understand and you can tell he cares a lot about supporting students. Lots of extra resources were provided, and he and my TA were both very responsive and willing to help. If you take good notes and read the materials the exams are on a couple times, you should have no problem doing well on them (plus the lowest exam score was dropped this semester). Highly recommend!

Easy A. Your grade is based on 3 essays (drop the lowest), a final essay, and discussion section (which for me was based on attendance, writing 5 discussion posts, and leading one discussion). You have a week to write each essay and they are open-note. The broad topics the class covered were symbolic mediation, culture (including a comparison between WWII-era US and Japan), language, and race/racism. It was an interesting and unique perspective of American culture (e.g.. Things that seem natural/universal aren’t actually universal, how the auto industry contributes to social inequality). Handler is a great lecturer and tries to make the class easy. He writes notes for each reading and each unit and posts them to Collab. If you’re a Conservative you’ll probably hate this class because Handler is very opinionated and Liberal and he often goes on political tangents/rants (but he says it’s okay if you don’t agree with his views, as long as you understand where he’s coming from). You can get away with not doing most of the reading because the lecture is just Handler reviewing the most important points from the readings, and because he uploads notes with the main takeaways from the articles. But if you don’t read, it may be harder to participate in discussion, depending on your TA. Colleen is a great TA!