ETHNMUS M50A
Jazz in American Culture: Late 19th Century through 1940s
Also listed as GJ STDS M50A: the same class, and each department holds its own seats and its own grade history.
Grades
3.83
Average grade awarded in ETHNMUS M50A. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were.
In the A range
90%
of the 534 letter grades
D, F or W
1.9%
of every letter grade awarded, plus withdrawals
Taken pass/no pass
2%
9 of 9 students passed
The registrar's own records: 534 grades over 3 terms, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. Every instructor is pooled here.
What is inside that record
No summer session is in that record.
The table below splits them, and term averages across those 3 terms ran 3.81 to 3.86.
Historical grades for all professors, across recorded terms. The course summary above includes all professors.
- A+ 316 · 59.2%
- A 136 · 25.5%
- A- 31 · 5.8%
- B+ 16 · 3.0%
- B 13 · 2.4%
- B- 5 · 0.9%
- C+ 4 · 0.7%
- C 2 · 0.4%
- C- 1 · 0.2%
- D 1 · 0.2%
- D- 2 · 0.4%
- F 7 · 1.3%
- P 9 of 544
- I 1 of 544
Percentages are of the 534 letter grades. Grey bars are non-letter outcomes: passes (P) and incompletes (I).
How the non-letter outcomes are counted
They are excluded from the GPA entirely rather than scored, because counting a P as a 4.0 would be a fabrication.
By instructor
| Instructor | Predicted GPA | Raw | n | Terms | A range | Workload | Winter 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BOLIN, MARC TIMOTHY reviews ↗ | 3.83 | 3.83 | 534 | 3 | 90% | very light | not teaching it |
Why Predicted is not the Raw average
“Predicted” is shrunk toward the course average, which is itself shrunk toward the department, so an instructor with a handful of students sits near the course mean rather than topping the list.
Grade records describe outcomes. For what a course is like to take, read student reviews written on dibs below or follow the separate external review link.
Workload and assignments
Work types reported in BruinWalk reviews of this course, across recorded instructors and terms. They may differ from this term's syllabus.
What the work looks like
- 2 exams, said by 4 reviewers
- Quizzes mentioned, no number given, said by 3 reviewers
- 1 paper, said by 3 reviewers
- 1 project, said by 4 reviewers
- Group works mentioned, no number given, said by 1 reviewer
Read from 26 reviews about 1 month ago. dibs counts only what a review actually states, so a kind of work nobody mentioned is absent rather than zero.
From the registrar's catalog
(Same as Global Jazz Studies M50A.) Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour. Course M50A is not requisite to M50B. Survey of development of jazz in American culture. Discussion of different compositional/performance techniques and approaches that distinguish different sub-styles of jazz from one another, as well as key historical figures that shaped development of jazz from its early years through modern jazz. Important historical social issues (segregation, Depression, World War II, Civil Rights Movement) that intersect with history of U.S. and jazz music. P/NP or letter grading.
Sections in Winter 2026
From the people who took it
Student reviews
What taking ETHNMUS M50A was like: the work, the teaching, and what students wish they’d known.
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