Professor
Christopher Hanscom
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - I took KOREA 80 virtually, and even as a virtual class I found it to be very enjoyable. You will watch 1 film per week, with a total of 10 films overall. Some of the early ones (like Spring on the Peninsula and A Stray Bullet) are pretty boring, but they certainly get better as time goes on. My personal favorite was Train to Busan, which we watched in Week 9. No, you won't be watching Parasite, but for the final you just have to watch and write about any film that's not in the syllabus, so you can choose to watch that one if you'd like. Every week you have to write a one-page response paper about the film assigned that week, and those are pretty easy. I had Minseung and I got 20/20 points on nearly every response submission. The level of engagement in this class is what you choose for it to be. In the virtual setting, Professor Hanscom's lectures were recorded and posted on CCLE, so you could watch them at any time. I think he's an engaging lecturer, but the lectures tend to feel like they're a bit longer than they need to be. You don't really need the lectures at all to do well on the response papers or writing assignments, and there were a few weeks that I ended up skipping the lectures. There's also a textbook for this class, but I promise that it is absolutely not necessary at all, and you can just save your money by not buying it. I never opened it once and still got an A in the class. Overall, I would recommend this class. It's a pretty easy A and I learned a lot of interesting stuff about Korean history and the Korean film industry.
Fall 2020 - I took KOREA 80 virtually, and even as a virtual class I found it to be very enjoyable. You will watch 1 film per week, with a total of 10 films overall. Some of the early ones (like Spring on the Peninsula and A Stray Bullet) are pretty boring, but they certainly get better as time goes on. My personal favorite was Train to Busan, which we watched in Week 9. No, you won't be watching Parasite, but for the final you just have to watch and write about any film that's not in the syllabus, so you can choose to watch that one if you'd like. Every week you have to write a one-page response paper about the film assigned that week, and those are pretty easy. I had Minseung and I got 20/20 points on nearly every response submission. The level of engagement in this class is what you choose for it to be. In the virtual setting, Professor Hanscom's lectures were recorded and posted on CCLE, so you could watch them at any time. I think he's an engaging lecturer, but the lectures tend to feel like they're a bit longer than they need to be. You don't really need the lectures at all to do well on the response papers or writing assignments, and there were a few weeks that I ended up skipping the lectures. There's also a textbook for this class, but I promise that it is absolutely not necessary at all, and you can just save your money by not buying it. I never opened it once and still got an A in the class. Overall, I would recommend this class. It's a pretty easy A and I learned a lot of interesting stuff about Korean history and the Korean film industry.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2016 - Prof. Hanscom is by far the best professor that I have at UCLA . His Korea C151 class is FANTASTIC. The class materials, readings, and powerpoint slides are splendid. If you read all required readings before each class, you will learn that it is a blessing to be able to go to a class taught by someone who masters the subject and cares about the materials in great details. Prof. Hanscom is very approachable, extremely smart, funny, and willing to help students. This class will offer you an invaluable chance to develop a sophisticated taste for Modern Korean Fiction from authors such as Yi Kwangsu, Hwang Sok-yong, Cho Se-hui, Kim Yong-ha, Pak Mingyu, and many more. The class ends a while ago, but I often think of T. H. White's passage " still the light of memory weaves" that Prof. Hanscom introduced during one of the classes. Highly recommend this class to anyone who loves literature or cares to "learn from one of the best UCLA professors" before graduation.
Fall 2016 - Prof. Hanscom is by far the best professor that I have at UCLA . His Korea C151 class is FANTASTIC. The class materials, readings, and powerpoint slides are splendid. If you read all required readings before each class, you will learn that it is a blessing to be able to go to a class taught by someone who masters the subject and cares about the materials in great details. Prof. Hanscom is very approachable, extremely smart, funny, and willing to help students. This class will offer you an invaluable chance to develop a sophisticated taste for Modern Korean Fiction from authors such as Yi Kwangsu, Hwang Sok-yong, Cho Se-hui, Kim Yong-ha, Pak Mingyu, and many more. The class ends a while ago, but I often think of T. H. White's passage " still the light of memory weaves" that Prof. Hanscom introduced during one of the classes. Highly recommend this class to anyone who loves literature or cares to "learn from one of the best UCLA professors" before graduation.
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