The professor is very kind, but otherwise bland. Lectures were not engaging and I often felt myself dozing off. Some of the materials were pretty interesting, but there were too many to reasonably read within the time assigned. Extra credit was a huge help, but I am still confused by how I managed an A+ when my papers were graded very harshly and I didn’t do well on the pop quizzes. The poor communication between the professor and my TA (not sure whose fault it was) led to a lot of confusion within my discussion regarding exams and assignments. Overall, this class was super disorganized and very stressful. I would not recommend.

Overall, the class is pretty easy. Grading consisted of four pop quizzes during lecture, three short reflection papers, and the written final. The quizzes were pretty easy in my opinion, and I didn't really do the reading. I skimmed a lot of it and went to lecture, and I got by. Plus, she offered an extra credit assignment worth 10% of the final grade.

I don't really think I learned anything from this class, but some of the readings were interesting. Take this class if you are interested in reading classic Asian American texts by yourself. It's fairly easy, but it's not something I would take again.

Your grade consists of:
-Three 2-3 paged reflection papers on assigned reading (each 15pts)
-Group presentation in discussion (10pts)
-Attendance/participation in discussion (I don't think my TA or the students took the participation part too seriously tho) (5pts)
-4 pop quizzes on reading (each worth 5pts)
-Extra credit paper

Pros:
-She originally wanted us to do a midterm, but people were stressing about their first paper scores so she dropped the midterm. So the only in-class exam we had was the final. Instead, she increased two of our paper scores from 10 to 15 points
-We had one day with a guest speaker, and 2-3 in-class movie days so lecture was breezy
-Material is okay. Many of the readings/novels were readable, and I definitely enjoyed the 2 novels. A couple of the readings by Lisa Lowe and Williams are absolutely....horrendous, and tripped people up. I didn't understand anything at all reading those two texts, but I just focused on her slides and how she summarized them in lecture. There's certain key points she wants you to know from each text, so for your papers, just add those key concepts into your writing and see how it relates or shows up in your text, and that's pretty much it.
-Extra credit helped make up for my poor quiz scores

Cons:
-No bruin cast and she doesn't post slides online
-The amount of assigned reading is a lot. For example, on her syllabus, in just one week it would say "have chp 1-6 + preface of this novel read by Oct 22" then "have chp 7-11 read by Oct 24" so basically you have to be reading the novel like a couple weeks in advance. but there's other weekly reading assigned that you have to do. I ended up skimming like 25% of each novel, and I skipped two short stories, and also didn't come to lecture to watch one of the movies, which didn't hurt me at all. But definitely don't skip the 'theoretical' texts b/c those will show up in the final and will be required to use for your papers
-The quizzes were tricky and for a couple of the questions, even if you did the reading it wouldn't really help you

No one really knew what they learned in the course. It was more of a nice intro to different historical events of Asian Americans, and reading different accounts of the Asian American experience. It's supposedly an interdisciplinary course so it's a mix of learning history, as well as defining culture and how the definition differs according to different writers/thinkers.