<p>i was interested in taking this for my r&c requirement, and i want to hear how this class is. is it easy (probably most important)? is it interesting?
i've heard that some people did the very minimum and got A- and some people worked their hardest to get a B-.
berkeley doesn't list the instructor yet so i can't really look up professors' ratings either.</p>
<p>any comments please?</p>
<p>Are you interested in reading and writing about art history?</p>
<p>If you pick an R&C course whose reading list is interesting to you, then you are more likely to do the readings and write good quality papers for the course.</p>
<p>yeah, i am. but i’m more interested in what others thought of the class. whether the reading load was heavy, or if people were interested at first but found this class boring. i want others’ opinions, not the obvious statement like “if you’re interested, then you’ll be ok.”</p>
<p>A lot of the time, the professors for Reading and Composition classes switch each semester, and the professor is instrumental in determining the rigor, length of reading material, and the quality of the class as a whole. As a result, even people who have previously taken one of the sections of the Art History Reading and Composition classes won’t, unfortunately, be able to give you very meaningful input. (Unless, of course, they happened to have taken the class with the same professor.)</p>
<p>^
Everyone please listen to this guy before asking any more R1A/R1B questions…</p>
<p>I took HistArt R1B in Spring 2013.</p>
<p>The topic of HistArt seems to vary with the “professor” (“professor” in quotes because the person teaching probably is going to be solely a GSI). The topic of my HistArt class was French paintings around the 1800’s (focusing mainly on Manet), and on ninjacourses, my instructor had a green zone rating. My friend took HistArt R1B the same semester as I did, but with another instructor, and his topic was about Japanese art (which kind of made it exciting for him, since he is a huge fan of Japanese culture).</p>
<p>I took Theater R1A the semester before, and the format of the Theater R1A class I took and the HistArt R1B class I took was pretty similar. </p>
<p>Basically, a majority of your grade seems would come from the essays you would do. For the essays, you get 1 rough draft (which you then take to class for a “peer review workshop” with your classmates) and 1 final draft, which is the only draft that the instructor looks at.</p>
<p>Then during most of class time on other days, we would just mainly discuss the readings that we were supposed to read the night before… which I never really bothered to read. Supposedly, we get “participation points” from discussing the readings, but I barely actually participated… probably only made a comment/asked a question less than 10 times during the whole semester.</p>
<h2>For our final essay, I barely managed to turn it in. My instructor decided to give us a deadline extension and a grade bump because he failed to keep his promise of giving us back our graded essays on time. It was supposed to be an essay of 8-10 pages about this art history book we read (or at least, was supposed to read… I barely read the book), and I ended up doing only like 7 pages (actually, it was more like a 6.5 pages), and to make matters worse, I turned it in late due to stupid problems with my computer…</h2>
<p>SURPRISINGLY, I ended up getting a overall grade of an A- for HistArt R1B, which was surprising for me because I actually expected something lower.</p>
<hr>
<p>FAQ</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Was the class interesting?
Honestly, for the HistArt R1B class I took, not really… Except maybe the part where we got to the discussion about porno paintings (or to be more formal, “paintings of the nude”), but that kind of slowly got boring…</p></li>
<li><p>Are there any tests/quizzes?
Not for the HistArt R1B class I took, though I heard from other people that they had tests/quizzes in their R&C courses.</p></li>
<li><p>How much reading is there?
A lot. I didn’t read a lot of the readings we were supposed to do… which I don’t really recommend, since you’ll most likely have to end up referring back to those readings later when writing your essays.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>@GinyuTokusentai thank you so much for your input 
really helped a lot.</p>