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!

A really easy course. I definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested in anthropology or just need an easy class to fulfill a credit. Professor Handler really opens up your eyes to the world we live in. There is so much I didn't really realize about our state of living/being until taking this course. Every class is just a lecture. There's a total of three exams + the final which are all essays. He gives you about a week for each essay and a little more for the final. If you do well on the first two, you don't have to do the third because he'll drop the lowest essay. The readings are kind of long and sometimes are quite hard to understand the first time, so you do have to reread it. There's also discussion, but for me at least, the only grades for it were attendance, discussion posts, and leading discussion at least once. A pretty easy class.

I took this class to fulfill the Living Systems requirement, and also because it sounded interesting. This class was an easy A course for sure-- just go to lecture, listen and take good notes, and you can 100% get away with not doing the long readings. He literally covers everything you need to pull from the readings in class. I spent hours doing the readings in the beginning of the semester, but stopped altogether later on and was fine. Mr. Handler is very entertaining, not only as a funny person but also as an engaging lecturer. You will definitely enjoy this class if you're very liberal. It was interesting to listen to him lecture on race and provide real-world examples. Readings are hit or miss-- some ones that he discusses in class are definitely more interesting than others. Tests are incredibly easy. Three over the semester plus a final, and you can drop one test (most people just decide to not do the third test, get a 0, and drop it. That's how easy they are.) Mostly just analyzing written works and showing that you understand what he lectures in class, which is why the notes are crucial. Discussions are fine, it depends on the TA. I basically did nothing, barely talked the whole semester and it was great. Both Mr. Handler and the TAs should be easy graders too. Overall definitely recommend this course-- I enjoyed it a lot!

Richard Handler is a sweetheart and the perfect professor to teach anth 1010. He rants and rambles, speaks his mind on current events, makes fun of the comm school, and displays a wide variety of funny mannerisms on zoom. Prof Handler is incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about the course material and is a joy to have as a professor. I would recommend this class to anyone, anth major or not. All exams were take-home and usually completed over a weekend, and as long as you pay attention in class, you could do well on them (probably without doing the reading if you didn't want to). Readings weren't difficult or too heavy, and taking notes on them is a great way to prepare for section/exams (plus a lot of them are quite interesting).