Alexander is a great lecturer and I learned a lot about the history and context of European political systems. However, there is a LOT of reading. Most of the reading is pretty approachable and you don't have to do all of it to understand what Alexander is talking about. How well you do in the class really depends on how hard your TA grades

The material was interesting and Alexander is an enthusiastic professor. That said, there is a lot of reading, a lot of the readings seem to contradict each other, Alexander can go off on lots of tangents and confuse you, and he doesn't post his notes on Collab so you have to scribble them down real fast (he doesn't allow laptops). I wouldn't take this class, especially if you haven't taken PLCP before. But, Sarah Eskew was a pretty good TA. She's energetic, helps you understand the material for the most part, and grades fairly.

Good class, covers material on UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, EU. Alexander's a good lecturer, does have an overhead outline during class but does not post them to COLLAB so go to class! Sarah Eskew is a great TA

Tough

Professor Alexander is an enthusiastic lecturer, but tends to just get excited and shout about the same thing all class. He covers material extremely slowly and explains it in the most verbose manner possible. I generally only took one page of notes each class because he repeated himself so often. Also, his wordiness makes its way into his essay prompts. He took up half a page of paper describing what he wanted us to do for the first paper. I would not recommend taking this class unless you absolutely have to learn about Western Europe.

Least favorite professor at UVA. For some reason could never understand students' questions and would mock them rather than answer. He moved too slowly through lectures for the first 40 minutes of class and would then rush through half the scheduled lecture in the last ten minutes, making it impossible to take down notes. He also had his notes projected during class on a word document but would frequently forget about it and not move the page down, making it hard to follow along. I have not met a single person who enjoyed this class.

lots of reading. boring and really fast paced

Good class, depends on your TA likely but Alexander is lively and clearly knows his stuff. He is a no nonsense guy in that if you obviously didn't read and you asked a question he will call you out on it. He seems to be big on respect in that aspect, respecting him by not talking etc... but nonetheless he generally a nice easy going guy. His lectures were interesting and very detailed/helpful.

I enjoyed Alexander as a lecturer, but sometimes I had trouble with the way he categorized Western European politics. Often,things seemed to be confused chronologically and categorizing countries was difficult especially with such precarious differences between them. Don't let it discourage you though if comparative politics is your strong suit! It definitely isn't mine. Sarah Eskew is a nice TA, though in my opinion a difficult grader. However, if you ask her questions, she easily explains things to you with enthusiasm.

The class was good at explaining the basic situations in the 5 countries it looked at. It had a lot of reading. Alexander is a good lecturer but talks extremely fast so that you cannot write notes on all that he is saying. He also didn't use a microphone in the lecture hall which made him sometimes hard to hear so sit close to the front.