Professor Hanscom is a very passionate professor of Korean films. Lecture was mainly him providing key important elements of the films for the week including themes, patterns, and cinematic elements. The class was graded based on weekly film reviews that were solely graded by the TA (all of the grading is based on the TA, so hope you get a good TA to do your grading) as well as two essays and a final essay. The essays included being focused on one film, a comparative essay based on two films, and the final essay being on a Korean film not covered in class. Thinking watching a film each week would be time-consuming but not necessarily and completely doable. What helped me was taking notes on the film based on the discussion prompt for the week. Participation is really important in the discussion (graded) as you have to respond to people that are selected to present during that section.

Professor Hanscom was a bit disorganized in his lectures and often went off on unrelated tangents. However, if you are interested in Korean cinema or popular culture, I'd say this class is worth a shot! You have to watch a movie and then write a response paper each week. There are two big response papers in lieu of exams. I liked this because you have time to work on them and can also get help from your TA and professor.

In my discussion, my TA made everyone speak a certain number of times and he kept track how much everyone spoke to count it towards the participation grade. This was a bit annoying.

Overall, I think was a nice medium difficulty GE. You get to learn a lot about Korean history starting from the Japanese colonial period to current issues by watching movies every week.

List of films watched during my quarter: Age of Shadows, Spring on the Peninsula, A Stray Bullet, Sopyonje, Peppermint Candy, Secret Sunshine, I'm a Cyborg but thats OK, Train to Busan, Welcome to Dongmakgol.

SELLING THE TEXTBOOK - "Rediscovering Korean Cinema"! I have a physical copy with only a few notes/highlights in it. Text me at ********** if interested.
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Professor Hanscom was really great! His lectures were really engaging, especially if you had done some of the reading beforehand. There is quite a bit of reading, and you honestly don't need to read everything to do well on the response papers and essays. Of all the readings, I would say the chapters of Rediscovering Korean Cinema are the most useful. and WATCH THE FILMS! They are so good and will make the class so much easier and the lectures more engaging. Plus what better homework than watching a movie.

Kim was a fairly difficult TA, but left good feedback on papers ig. Discussion was usually helpful if everyone in your sections watched the films.

Overall recommend this as an average GE!

This was honestly a pretty fun GE. Although the class itself may initially seem like a time sink (2 lectures, 1 discussion, multiple "required" readings, 1 film, and 1 response paper per week), many of these things are actually optional. Professor Hanscom is very knowledgeable and his prerecorded lectures are interesting enough(at least the analysis part), but you do not have to watch them at all to do well in the class. The same goes with the required reading. As long as you know how to write and identify key elements in a film, you will do well in the class. The 3 long essays that replace midterms and finals aren't even that long(750-1000), and you can easily get 95+ on them.

Do not buy the textbook. It was expensive and not at all necessary to do well in the class.

This class is really interesting and easy. The movies are pretty good for the most part and weekly homework is quick and easy. The three papers are also very manageable. Professor Hanscom is very passionate and interesting to listen to. TA Mathieu Berbiguier is amazing and if he's involved with the course again I would highly recommend. Overall a fun, interesting, and easy course that I would wholeheartedly recommend to others (at least in the online covid format, idk how it is in person)

To be honest, I did not attend a single lecture nor read any of the chapters assigned in the textbook because they were not useful in getting a good grade or in completing any of the assignments with the exception of one essay requiring you to compare an adapted film to its original written narrative (obviously you had to read the narrative, but it's uploaded on CCLE and not in the textbook). So that said, I would not recommend buying the textbook, it's a waste of money (~$35) and you'll never need it.
There is a (one page) response paper assigned every week corresponding to a movie you have to watch. This takes about 1-3 hours to write depending on if you have an easy TA or not. On average I got 19/20 on the papers.
There is NO midterm or final for this class but there are 3 essays making up 20% of your grade each. The prompts are given ahead of time so you can easily finish them or get started before the deadline. These took me about 6 hours each and I got 85%, 93%, and 100% on them.
In all, I think it's a relatively easy workload since it's the same thing every week and as long as you participate in the section you'll get full points for the discussion. This class isn't stressful at all as long as you stay on top of your deadlines and ask for clarification about assignments in section (TAs and professor have a very quick response time).

This class has some really interesting Korean movies ranging from the 1940s to 2010s and allows me to learn more about Korean society/culture/history, ranging from the colonization era to Korean War, and even to events such as the Gwanju massacre/uprising and the globalization of Korea.

Every week there are two asynchronous lectures of 40ish mins and a movie, as well as readings regarding the film to read at your own pace, which I find to be a plus, as I can absorb some of the concepts at my own pace.

The readings, lectures, and movies were accessible to me, and overall the ideas that Professor Hanscom talked about were very interesting and insightful into learning about Korean cinema as a whole.

The assignments are manageable: One page (well, 250 word) response papers to a certain prompt regarding the movie every week, with three "bigger" but still manageable (1000 word) writing assignments; a film analysis paper, a comparison paper between a short story and its film adaptation, and a film review of a Korean movie not listed in the syllabus (picking one was really hard because there are so many good Korean movies!).

For the discussion section, there is only one assignment where you do a group project with 2 other people which you sign up for a specific week, making a Google Slides presentation to discuss the film with the discussion section, which is manageable as well, though watch out for triple weeks, in which the Writing assignment, weekly response paper and group presentation are all due.

If you've read the Bruinwalk reviews, I'm not sure why people say professor Hanscom gives unnecessary tangents. Maybe it might be because sometimes the lectures are not directly related to the weekly response paper assignments/writing assignments, such as when Professor Hanscom is talking about historical or demographic changes, but I find that to be a plus, as I can have more leeway into choosing whether I can include the historical evidence in my arguments, and sometimes I do use the historical evidence. I like how Professor Hanscom does not force a particular approach/ interpretation of a movie and doesn't require us to strictly use the readings in our homework.

If you're a cinephile and like to watch a movie (sometimes 2 hours) every week, or if you are interested in Korean culture/society/history in general, or both, take this class!