I have a lot of respect for Professor Bascara because I can tell his thoughts are very complex and interesting. However, his lectures are incredibly dry and boring and you'll probably end up falling asleep on a couple occasions. The good thing about this class is that there is no midterm. My TA was also another plus, since he made the discussions very interesting.

I think its very important that you have to be interested in the course to succeed.

For the final, you should be pretty familiar with your readings and be able to think on the spot for the essay.

Overall, I really enjoyed this class because of its discussion when my TA elaborated further on Professor Bascara's complex ideas.

Easy class, lectures were a little boring but discussions were a lot of fun. You should sign up for a discussion on Friday so that when you write the "weekly journals" you only have to write about his summaries of the readings during lecture. That way, you don't even need to do the reading

You write 2 papers, one is 2 pages and the other is 5 pages. The prompts are really vague but the TA's help you through them. The final wasn't too hard--you choose 13 of 15 short answers and I think 2 out of 3 essays (5 prompts were given to you before the class).

Overall, the class was interesting but Bascara makes the material a bit too vague.

Bascara seems to be a very dedicated and caring professor. He clearly puts time and effort into structuring his lesson plans, even attempting humor at times. Unfortunately, his lectures are VAGUE. He will throw many works and concepts at you, leading you to believe they will be tied together at the end. However, by the end of the one and a half hours, the class is over and he hasn't made any statements about the works at all. Worse yet, he enjoys using his large vocabulary to explain concepts that would otherwise very simple, making them very cryptic.

Your grade depends almost exclusively on your TA, so make sure that you get a good one! The work isn't difficult, but since over 35% of your grade rides on two essays, a competent TA is crucial.

In the end I received an A so it's a doable class. Just be prepared to draw arbitrary connections among various works.

I took AAS30 in Fall '09. While it is true that Professor Bascara uses complex vocabulary to explain concepts, it isn't necessarily difficult to grasp if you're listening closely to his words. Staying awake can sometimes be a problem since it's a huge class and his voice is soft, but the material he presents is interesting if you make the effort to listen. He also shows multiple video clips in class, so make sure you attend lecture. You needn't write down every word he says, but just keep up and once you get the point, you'll be able to draw on that to write your midterm paper and discuss those ideas on the final. There is quite a large amount of reading on some weeks and a few short stories or poems for other weeks, so while falling behind on reading one week may seem ok, don't let it get past a few weeks once those larger excerpts start coming in. Also, Daisy Le is one of the best TA's for this class – she's chill and grades easy, and makes sure to keep the discussions on track. Discussions in general are painless and actually worth attending. Overall fun, relaxed-pace GE class and one that is valuable to anyone's appreciation of ethnic diversity.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 :)

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.