[HIST W3710] History of Iran To the Safavid Period

Bulliet is many things, and one of them is a fantastic lecturer. After stumbling onto this class and planning during registration to drop it, I sat mesmerized the first day as Bulliet described the tricks and hacks of casual archaeology. After that, I found myself fascinated by some insight or story each class -- it was the only class I always went to. That (and a short but fairly sweet reading list) is the good news. The bad news is that while I got depth and, at times, breadth from Bulliet's dense and excellent lectures, I felt I wasn't getting a good overall grasp of the material. Normally, that's fine (Eric Foner's Radical Tradition class is like that; his Civil War and Reconstruction class is not). But a midterm, a paper and a final later, I'm not so sure if it's fair to apply such an average (read: heavy) load of synthesis work to what is basically an introductory class. Still, if Bulliet is teaching on a topic that interests you, by all means take him.