HIEA 2101

Professor Seeley was great. He's a sweet and somewhat shy professor who is very nerdy about Korean history. He is actually Mormon and did his mission in South Korea, which is where he fell in love with the culture and came back to study it. The class is a very doable history class. Four quizzes on ten terms each, a midterm, a final, and a paper. Both the midterm and the exam tested on the terms from the quizzes plus new terms plus one essay on the midterm and two on the final. The terms were probably the worst part of the class, but they weren't terrible and it was pretty important to know them to conceptualize Korean history. Professor Seeley's office hours were very helpful, and he was always happy to go over what I had written for the terms to make sure they were accurate, and he read over my whole essay before I submitted it. I wouldn't say that this was the absolute best class I have taken at UVA, but it was a very solid class, there are no surprises, Korea is interesting, and it is very possible to get an A. The TA Mina is so nice, but the discussion sections were very boring and not really helpful for the class. Also, you do NOT have to do the textbook reading. It's on the syllabus, but it's practically optional and only reiterates the Powerpoints. The discussion readings are a bit more necessary, but as long as you get the general gist you are fine.

Idk if the class just got stricter on grading since the previous reviews, but it is not lenient. Other classmates have said the same thing.

This class was among one of my favorite that I've taken at UVA, and I was fortunate enough to be able to take it during my first semester. Professor Seeley is very interested and passionate about the subject matter of this class, and if you dread taking history classes as I do, this is an easy one that is also very interesting and generally stress-free to knock out that requirement. The class is composed of 4 ID quizzes, for which you are given a list of terms ahead of time to prepare from and 2 are chosen for the actual quiz; a paper, a final exam, and a midterm. As long as you take decent notes you should be able to get pretty high grades on all of these assignments, as the grading is quite lenient. Furthermore we were also given an extra credit opportunity, where we got to watch a Korean movie and send him an email telling him what we learned and it was actually pretty fun. Overall I would say that Professor Seeley made this course really easy and interesting to take, even for a first year STEM major, and he was also really receptive to feedback and was very helpful and enthusiastic during office hours. If you have the opportunity to take this course I would highly recommend it!

This class was very interesting, I really enjoyed it! Prof Seeley is clearly very passionate about Korean history which made it even more enjoyable to learn during lectures. He is also very understanding and easy with grades. There is a midterm and a final as well as vocab quizzes which during my class he graded with a check system so it was very easy to get 100s on them. The reading is kind of a lot but tbh you don't really have to do all of the readings. I am a biology major and I don't usually take much interest in history classes but I loved this class and highly recommend taking it!!