I took this class the first semester of my first year. All of the reviews on here are so negative, however, I really thought this class was great. It was very interesting, not too difficult, and honestly didn't require much work. The other reviews on here say that you need to be interested in European history or have some sort of background to take this, I fully disagree. I'm a biology major and have absolutely no background knowledge of history and am frankly not even that interested in it. I thought this class was very easy to understand and interesting. I'm not even a hard working person at all, and I thought the workload was manageable. Professor Kershaw was great, though I'm pretty sure he wore the same shirt every day, his lectures were interesting and easy to pay attention to. I was never bored in the class and able to keep up. The grading breakdown was 20% midterm, 20% final, 30% discussion, 15% essay 1, 15% essay 2. The final was not cumulative and was structured the same as the final. They both consisted of identifying 5 terms discussed in the course for 25 points, and writing a paragraph on 3 excerpts from readings done in the course. There is a lot of reading assigned, but I really never had to read all of it. All you need to do is skim it and try to connect it to the questions given at the start of the reading. For the discussion, as long as you try to talk it isn't bad. The TA was great and led the discussions well. Each of the essays was about 1200 words. You are given five opportunities to write the essays and get to decide which you write. You get two weeks to write the essay, which is definitely sufficient time. You can also write a third essay if you are unhappy with one of your grades on the two and then drop the lowest grade. Overall, this class has way too much hate on here for how it actually was. With doing very little work in the class I was able to get a grade that I'm ok with, you can definitely get an A in here easily if you actually do all the work.

This course was not good. Professor Kershaw is very knowledgeable but his lectures are not coherent. He jumps between time periods and speaks very quickly so it is very hard to keep up. He also spends half of the class repeating his previous lectures and showing images of artifacts. His office hours are by appointment by 5 pm the day before, and he did not answer questions during class. This made getting help from him very hard if you did not have time to stay after class. The readings are ridiculously long. I am not sure if this is unique to this semester, but the readings fell out of synch with the lectures. This made the 50-page primary sources very confusing because there was little context. The TA Nadav poorly conducted the discussions. After students spoke there was little response and there was a lack of clarity on the importance of the readings. Your grade consists of 2 papers, a midterm, and a final exam. The exams are 1/2 identifying/giving the significance of obscure quotes from the primary sources. The other half is an essay. This class had so much potential but fell extremely short of my expectations.

Professor Kershaw is a knowledgeable and well-meant instructor. However, his class and the TA, Nadav, was less than satisfactory. Instead of the two exams, two essays, and discussion factoring into the grade, Kershaw scrapped exams in favor of three papers. Because the papers required an analysis of the primary sources provided in a massive course pack, the lectures became irrelevant. After the midpoint of the course, I stopped watching them, solely focusing on reading the content in preparation for discussion. Discussions met once a week over Zoom. The TA, Nadav Zadoyka, led these discussions and, unfortunately, did a poor job facilitating discussions. Despite doing well and earning an "A" in the discussion section, I feared talking because if I were wrong with any of my points, he would bluntly and quickly let you know. There was no constructive criticism on papers, along with the harsh grading for no necessary reason. I earned a "B+" in the class but would have earned an "A-" or higher with a normal History Department TA. If you are not deeply interested in early Europe, do NOT take this class, and do NOT take HIEU 3141 in the Spring, as there is the same combination. Take a class with a better TA or professor who will not intimidate you and motivate you to do better. I know Nadav tried his best, but he failed because he could not utilize positive reinforcement with students, which could have helped lighten the mood and enhanced the weekly discussions.

This course was particularly affected by COVID, causing Professor Kershaw to scrap the exams and replace them with essays. The only grades in the class were three essays and discussion participation. Participation is not too difficult as long as you read the texts thoroughly (and let me say that while a few texts are not super exciting, others were more interesting, e.g. the Waltharius). The class was also set back by the asynchronous lectures which distanced the class from Professor Kershaw. He seemed like a very intelligent and kind professor, but I never had a chance to speak with him. Unfortunately the content of the lectures did not end up serving much purpose since the essays were based entirely upon the texts, but it was certainly relevant to the texts. I assume the lectures would have been much more important if we had exams. The TA Nadav was admittedly not the best as he did not stimulate discussion very well, but the discussions still seemed fairly fruitful (granted, these discussions were over Zoom). I will say that the essays helped improved my writing. #tCF2020

I took this class as a first year due to a recommendation from a friend who had also taken it first semester first year. It was definitely more work than I expected and required a lot more weely effort than most of my other classes. Kershaw is a very knowledgeable lecturer but has a tendency to lecture on topics all over the place, which can make it difficult to recognize what to take notes on during lecture. He speaks quickly, so your best bet is to try to write in as much detail as possible, because the midterm and final will include terms from a list on his website that were terms mentioned in lecture. Your notes will also help you when it comes time to write the essays: there are 5 opportunities to write them over the course of the semester, and you have to write at least two (with the option of writing three and your TA will only take the top two grades). On Kershaw's website it says the essay topics will be released giving you two weeks to write each one, but in reality, by the time the essay topic came out, the due date was a week away so you pretty much had to spend a lot of time writing over that weekend to finish the 5/6 page essay. Because of the short time to write each essay, it's important to start writing them early in the semester otherwise you'll find yourself writing one a week towards the end, and you won't receive your grade from your last essay before writing your next one. Besides essay writing, the majority of work goes into preparing for discussion, since you'll read around 600 pages of medieval European text over the course of the semester. I spent a lot of time on those readings so I could contribute to discussion, but also so that I knew the readings pretty well going into the midterm and final, because besides defining terms, on the exams you have to be able to identify passages taken directly from the primary sources you have read. This includes identifying the title of the text, when it was written, its author, and the significance, which can seem difficult but luckily the exams are not cumulative. Also, everything is weighted equally in the class (20% for the midterm, final, participation, essay 1 and essay 2), so as long as you start putting in the work early, an A is doable. You just have to decide if you want to put in the time and effort to get an A.

Professor Kershaw was easily one of my favorite professors. He has a British accent that makes lectures much more interesting and he is extremely enthusiastic about the topics. Overall, the class itself was not too difficult but it definitely requires a lot of effort. You are required to write 2 essays and there are 5 opportunities. You can write up to 3 essays and they grade the 2 highest essays. In addition to this, there are 2 exams, the midterm and the final and both are 50 minutes. The other portion of your grade will be the discussion and that requires a lot of work because you constantly need to be engaged and knowledgeable. Advice for anyone who takes this class, prepare for discussions and be involved even if you are scared, it's necessary. Go to office hours and study your notes from class because they will help you with essays and discussions.

This course is excellent. It also falls short of its potential. More on that later. The course is a survey of European history from late Antiquity/early Middle Ages to the late Middle Ages/early Modernity (~1000 years). More emphasis is definitely placed on the earlier stuff than on the later stuff. Kershaw is very knowledgable, very articulate, and British. He is also frustratingly disorganized. He lectures very quickly and his lectures lack coherent structure. In fact, he spends most of each lecture wrapping up the topic from the previous lecture, and only at the very end of a lecture does he get to the new material. This makes for a disappointing, if still enjoyable, experience in lecture. Drew is hands-down my favorite TA I've had in all my time at UVA. He is smart, organized, and chill. He's a bro, really. His discussion sections are relaxed and insightful. He also lectured a couple of times in place of Kershaw - while he has the potential to be a good lecturer, he was often forced to catch up on the material after Kershaw had fallen behind and, as a result, Drew would have to skip over a great deal of material. The work load in this course is very manageable. There is a midterm exam and a final exam - neither of which are cumulative. Each exam has two sections - IDs (~25%) and passage IDs (~75%). The passage IDs come from the primary sources. While you are supposed to read both primary and secondary readings for each week's discussion section, it is most important that you focus on the primary sources. Not only are these important for the exams, but they are the foundations of the papers that you write. There are four opportunities to write papers, and you have to write two. You also can write more than two and only your best two grades will be counted. The last segment of your grade is participation, which comes less from attendance at lecture and more from your preparation/attendance/participation in discussion. I really enjoyed this course and highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in medieval Europe. This being said, know that there is potential for disappointment, for great as this course is, there is room for improvement.

I absolutely loved this class...I had no clue I was interested in history until I took it. Professor Kershaw is a GREAT professor; very animated and enthusiastic, as well as extremely knowledgable (and has a British accent). He was able to thoroughly explain the complex histories of the pre-Middle Ages and Middle Ages, a lot of which I hadn't previously learned about it any history class. Make sure you go to every lecture and take detailed notes. There is no 'textbook' for this class, only a course book that has readings for each discussion section. So, all of the information Kershaw says in class is basically the only way info is provided; the section readings are sources and documents, mostly an enforcement for what was learned in lecture. The two papers, midterm, and final were manageable and fairly graded; not much homework except for the weekly section reading (meaning you learn a lot each lecture). My TA, Drew Sorber, was also excellent, very knowledgeable, and made section easy to get through. Highly recommend this class!

Don't take this class if you don't care about ancient history. More than anything, this will effect your grade. Overall, the class isn't that hard but if you don't find the topic interesting you won't want to do the work. The midterm and final are relatively easy if you come to lecture easily and go to discussion to fill in the gaps. I recommend you get Courtney as your TA. You have to write 4 short papers on the discussion reading that your TA will grade but other than that the class isn't all that much work because the lecture readings are not necessary.

Kershaw made for an excellent lecturer, but that's really all he did as the TA's run the discussion portion of the class. The material itself was particularly interesting, but difficult to understand at times. What was nice is that the topics that were discussed in the discussion section of the class were fairly intriguing, which kept it fresh. Good class overall, even if it required a decent amount of work.