selling "aapi nexus: Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders Policy, Practice and Community" <-- Environmentalism: Expansions, connections, and Social Change for $6. Selling "
Amerasia journal: Los Angeles since 1992: Commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the Uprisings" for $6.

Fall 2011, Asian AM 30 (not Writing II)

Professor: He's decent. His lectures are essentially all of his thoughts, analysis, allusions, and syntheses of the readings. Because of this, lecture can get vague. He incorporates videos to his slides though, and that makes lectures interesting some times. However, there's a high risk of dozing off in class.

Class material: Content include literature about: Filipinos, Indians, Vietnamese, LGBT Asians, Japanese, Guam and a whole other of other types of Asians. There's a lot of reading, and a few movies you have to watch online too. I found it pretty interesting, so reading wasn't an issue.

Assignments: Weekly readings are like 3-10 different sources varying in length from short (1 page poem) to long (30 pages). Again, it's not much of an issue if you find them to be interesting, but if you don't like reading, then this could be a drag. Synthesize and analyze (but don't summarize) your readings into a weekly 1-page paper. Also, you have to do one group presentation about the readings and ask questions in that presentation. They were supposed to be like 15minutes, but some of mine went on for the whole class. No midterm, but there were two papers: a one-page one due Week 3ish and a 4-5 page one due 7-8th Weekish. Go to your T.A.'s for help.

Final: 15 free response questions regarding the readings and 3 essay prompts. Free response shouldn't be much of an issue if you did the readings + reviewed the night before; they can get a bit specific. The essay prompts are given throughout the last 4-5 lecture sessions. Outline the essays with good details before finals and you should be fine.

Grading: I got an A with A's on my weekly assignments, a B on first paper, a B+ on my second paper, and a ?? on finals. There seems to be a lot of people that got A's, including ones that did the readings last minute + didn't attend lecture, so this might fall into an "easy A" GE.

Selling:

"aapi nexus: Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders Policy, Practice and Community" Environmentalism: Expansions, Connections, and Social Change

Amerasia journal: Los Angeles since 1992: Commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the Uprisings"

Call/Text **********

Professor Bascara is not a bad professor, and I believe that he genuinely cares about his students, it's just that he is SO INCREDIBLY BORING! His lectures are usually straight from readings, and he has a way of making nearly 85% of his students fall asleep. It was rare when I could actually stay awake for an entire lecture. His monotonous voice combined with his overly-complicated and highly unnecessary vocabulary made for a very dull and repetitive lecture. Also, about three or four weeks into class, he randomly decided to start checking attendance by having us sign in during lecture, so be sure to attend all classes which I'm sure count toward participation. Also, a portion of your grade is based on attendance to your discussion section, so be sure to make all of those meetings. Overall, your grade is broken up evenly into four parts, each work 25% of your grade, so everything counts. You have one midterm, a final, a group research paper and presentation, and discussion journals that are collected every week in discussion. The discussion journals are no big deal, as they are only a minimum of four sentences, usually talking about the progress that your group has made on the research papers that are due ninth and tenth week of class. The midterm and final consist of mostly IDs and one or two short essay questions. For the midterm, there were 15 IDs (25 for the final), where you had to identify the name of the work and its author based on a quotation from the text that he gives you. He provides a list of the authors during the test, and most of the quotations have some semblance of the title in them, so overall, these are pretty easy. There is also one short essay question for the midterm (2 for the final), and these are also pretty basic, each worth 15 pts. One of my friends skimmed over all of the readings the night before and got an A-, so it's not difficult at all to get top marks in this class. Before the midterm and final, our TA had us each take notes on some of the readings, which she then emailed out to our section. This really helped me prepare for both tests because it gave me a basic idea of the readings without me having to spend hours reading some of the material (a lot of this stuff is really long and dreary reading). However, I don't know if other sections did the same thing...if not, maybe you could suggest it. Basically just do the readings (or don't do them, really doesn't matter as long as you look over them the night before), attend lecture, and attend section, and you'll do fine.

Professor Bascara is very intelligent, and is one of the Asian American Studies' departments finest. However, when it comes to actual lectures... then he is pretty dry and boring. Don't get me wrong. He knows what he is talking about. He tries to crack a couple of jokes here and there, but what baffles me is how mundane his lectures always were.

For the AAS30 course, we were required to read pieces of literature and analyze different films. Honestly, if all you did was read and watch films, the lectures did very little to supplement your education. My discussions were always held before the second lecture of the week, so I already knew what I was going to expect in class. So if you do the work and communicate with your TA, his lectures seem almost unnecessary.

He's not great, but he's not horrible either.

Prof. Bascara seems to care about the general welfare of the students, in terms of students worrying about "what should be in the journals" "How long does it have to be?" and he answers it in class. He lets students know what is going on in the present time. He is very eloquent regarding Asian American studies in his lectures and very effective in showing videos, photos, and lecture slides. Very good!
(engineers should take this class).

The tricky part of this class though, is that the essays, please do well on them, especially the midterm paper. The first paper is worth 10% of the grade, not bad. The midterm paper weighs about 25% of your total grade, that's huge. Do well on both of them. 20% is your discussion, go to all of them and participate actively and be sure to turn in journals weekly. 20% will come from journals turned in at the end of the quarter. 5% would be cultural event paper.-- Now 80% is busy work. 20% is your FINAL. Please study all of the readings and the video furnaces that the class website has. It took considerable studying, but doable. The essay questions on the final are time consuming, so be sure you set extra time to do these prompts.

I certainly wished I had another GE with this professor :)

I went to my TA to ask for help on the first paper the week before it was due, and she said it was okay, that it didn't need that much fixing. Two weeks later, I got my paper back with comments saying that my paper didn't make sense, that she didn't know what I was talking about. I argued the fact that she was contradicting what she had said earlier about my paper being okay, so she and another TA decided to 'reread' it. After one more week, when I went to check up on my paper, I found out that she had given my paper to the professor to read. I went to Bascara, and he basically told me that I deserved my grade on the paper. I informed him of the fact that my TA contradicted herself on paper versus in speech, and he made up some vague bullshit, saying things like: 'Yeah, my staff and I want to try and create a positive image of this course. We don't want to create any hostilities or regrets. I'll meet with the TA's and we'll work out a compromise...' I ended up with an A- in the class (meaning he didn't change the grade on my paper).
In short, this course has pretty crappy TA's. You're better off taking other ethnic studies courses.

Professor Bascara is not a horrible professor nor is he a great one. I found his lectures dull and all over the place. He tries to make the lectures interesting by adding a few jokes here and there, but I find myself dozing off. There is a lot of readings and I understand the gist of it during the lectures, but it is really in the discussions that helped me. The most important thing to know the themes and plot for the readings. The midterm is an essay, but that doesn't mean you should slack off. As for the final, it is a series of short answers and two prompts. There was more than enough time for the final if you understand most of your readings. If you can, try to get Daisy Le as your TA. You won't regret it. She was really chill, helpful, and easy to approach. She tries her best to make sure the class understand the readings. Though the lectures were mediocre, the discussions were great. I got a B+ in the class.

I took Asian Am 30 with Bascara in Fall 2009, and I really liked the class. Although his lectures were sometimes convoluted, I enjoyed the material and his presentations for the most part. In total, you have two papers (one is designated as your midterm) and the final. What I appreciated about the papers was the flexibility-there were many topics/themes you could draw upon, and as long as your supported your claim accordingly, you would do well. In addition, I highly recommend taking Asian Am 30 with D. Le as your TA. She genuinely cares about her students and offers much helpful advice for during office hours. Overall, this class is completely doable. Don't hesitate to take it.

This GE was fairly easy, but his lectures are horribly vague and really boring. He uses a lot of multimedia, which is good, but tends to use words that are a little advanced for most of the topics. Not a ton of work, but lots of vague ideas, so it helps if you are good at making random connections between articles.