This class was easy, but had a ton of unnecessary busywork. The material itself is incredibly interesting, especially if you are an Asian American yourself, but Professor Tran lectures in a monotonous way and honestly seems to lacks a true passion for the material she is teaching (I believe she is a musicology professor primarily). Lecture is not at all required, as everything that is taught can be found on the slides posted on CCLE; you will, however, have to watch the movies on your own time. To do well on the midterms you'll only have to skim over the readings and really focus on memorizing the info on the slides (our class' TAs went on strike with solidarity with UCSC, so the final paper was changed to a second midterm).

Discussion is an entirely different subject, and the TA you get will dictate your grade, as your grade is based off on papers, an in-discussion presentation, participation, and a group in-class presentation. My TA, June, was incredibly condescending and was completely unresponsive to e-mails (I asked other people in my section, and they did not respond to even ONE of our e-mails). The readings (often 40+ pages a week), on top of weekly journal assignments and group projects/papers just made this class almost unmanageable. Overall, I'd say to look for another GE with less work.

The class was a disgusting amount of work, especially towards the end of the quarter. On week 9, we had a midterm, a paper due, a reading response due, and a large group project due the next Monday. The large group project, Build a Better Movement, is a group project that puts everyone in one discussion into one single large group, and consist of multiple parts. Workload is a lot for a GE. Midterms are also multiple choice only and pick out random details from the readings, requiring a lot of memorization to do well. Grading is also rather harsh. Definitely do not recommend taking this as a GE.

Professor Tran is a good professor. I took her Asia American studies 171E last quarter it was very helpful. Maybe this is her first time teaching the lower division class, her class work distribute was mass. There are six sections, each section has one topic. And than six sections people combine together to finish a "make a better movement". I would said that meaningful, but I don't think the way Professor Tran used is not reasonable and not efficiency. Compare to her upper course, this course has even more readings and films need to be study, and those content will be on the test! The course itself is meaningful if you have a lot of time to learn, but I don't think a senior student should devote too much energy for just pass a lower course.