My favorite class so far! Prof Xu is incredibly intelligent, well-spoken, and passionate, which shines through in lectures and content. In class participation isn't heavy, just do the discussion posts thoughtfully and that's it. I can't recommend this class enough, I learned so much!!

Extremely intelligent, funny, and passionate professor who wants you to succeed! The lectures are very interesting and make the class really fun to go to. He is very supportive and will go out of his way to ensure you can succeed in the class. Each week there was a new film, reading assignment, and written response. Final project as essay or video.

Professor Xu is an intelligent, kind, and caring professor. His lectures are inspiring and well organized. I love his teaching. The class is not hard in general, but the effort is required. 100% would take him again.

Incredibly well-spoken, really cares about his students. Weekly discussion post, just put the effort in. The films we watched were generally interesting and honestly became more interesting with his lectures. Lectures were expansive, great professor, definitely recommend taking this class

The course was fairly easy to pass as long as you showed up to class. Attendance was taken through discussion posts. The professor would call out students for being late, most of the time it was a reminder to be on time but there was one student that came in about 15 minutes late and was called out in front of everyone. Other than that, he's great.

he is the best professor ever in UCSB EALCS. He is supportive and inspirational, a professor who is willing to guide his student through the journey of finding knowledge. while his class works the best when you dedicate yourself into the readings. and he is really kind and caring on gradings, if you show hard work, you will get a nice score.