AMST 3630

This was easily the worst class I have taken at the University.
It should be immediately understood that if you have opinions on course texts that differ from Professor Chong's, this class is not for you. While the material Professor Chong provides is fascinating and their potential is incredible, her style of teaching destroys any chance of engaging discussion. Professor Chong claims at the beginning of the year that the course will be discussion-based, which it largely is, but all points discussed are her own, and if a student wishes to provide a dissenting or differing analysis from hers, they are quickly shut down by the professor. Besides allowing no room for creativity, Professor Chong is often shockingly rude to students, either by her usual discounting of opinion or a remark about her belief that a student is unable to analyze literature at all, despite the merits of the student's analysis. Her grading is also profoundly confusing as she sometimes demands contradictory efforts (i.e. in one of her office hour she explained that close reading assignments of a scene in a film must both: not make an argument and explain the rhetorical meaning behind what is happening in the scene being closely read, which some may label as an argument, but I digress) or she provides no guidelines at all and then penalizes the student for not executing the assignment in the manner she wishes it to be done. Besides the academic peculiarities of the class, Professor Chong too often makes jokes while discussing subjects that are wildly inappropriate to be joked at, such as various genocides, and enjoys a solitary laugh at her problematic sense of humor.
The final project in the class is a lesson plan to teach imaginary students a concept from the class, which is an excellent idea and could be fun and rewarding. However, Professor Chong’s comments on the project regard mostly education theories and practices that would be taught in an education class but most certainly were not taught in her own. While the project could be great, her demands for technical ability belong in the Ed school, not an English/American Studies class. This final project is the final insult of this class as Chong asks students to prepare an assignment she has not given the knowledge needed to execute in the way she wants, provides a vague, confusing smattering of verbal instructions that a creative individual might call a rubric, rudely degrades students' efforts in front of the class rather than providing useful feedback, and, of course, automatically rejects interpretations of sources that she does not agree with.
I highly recommend avoiding this class and professor. In my experience at the University, I have never been so limited or witnessed classmates be so limited in our ability to analyze texts by a professor. This is a course that resembles a high school class in its desire for regurgitation of information rather than genuine synthesis of ideas and has little value in terms of growing as a student. If you must take the class, be prepared to disregard any personal opinion, take rudely delivered feedback, and generally have an unacademic experience. The best I can say for this class is that the texts are interesting, diverse, and expand your worldview immensely. The tragedy of this fantastic corpus is the class itself.

Very interesting class content and readings, but the grading was confusing. There were two essays assigned where we had to conduct a "close-reading analysis" on either a book passage or a film/graphic novel excerpt. I strongly recommend going to Prof Chong's office hours to ask her how to close read, since she is particular in what she is looking for when grading. The final project is a group project that involves designing a lesson plan about a topic that's related to the Vietnam War. This can be fun if you start early, but I would also highly advise you seek advice from her since there's not really a rubric to follow and she is the one that's grading it.
#tCFF23

A wonderful, thought-provoking class that is also manageable. The professor is very knowledgeable and caring.
The coursework consists of two posts before each class that cover readings/whatever movie was assigned, and then two posts after each class covering discussion and personal thoughts during and after that class.
There is a final project that is geared towards teaching aspects of what was covered in class--it doesn't need to be the Vietnam War, exactly--to different age groups.