Dorothy Ko

Going into the class, I was scared and intimidated being that I have barely taken any humanities classes in college so far and I'm a STEM major. Professor Ko is brilliant. She is able to lead the class in the most amazing way—sharing her own genius comments and analysis, welcoming and encouraging all students in the class to share their thoughts, and giving us as students the power and freedom to explore the topics we are interested in. The readings are very interesting and niche. I've never studied food before, and my mind feels expanded and stretched in the best way possible. Professor Ko cultivates a supportive environment among the class. All the other students were super supportive of each other. Overall, this class is so heartwarming and human. Whether or not you're necessarily interested in this specific topic, I highly recommend you take a class with Professor Ko. You will absolutely not regret it.

had really high expectations for this class, so it's a little on me that i didn't fully enjoy it :( heard great things from history friends, and lots of amazing reviews on culpa. i lovee prof ko as a person and i wouldn't say the class is bad, especially for beginner history majors! but as a junior, i didn't find the course particularly stimulating; you get a good overview of the historical context but don't delve deep into any theoretical applications and the assignments (summary papers and short answers) reflect that. a bit disappointing given how much interesting work can be done in this particular era of history. lectures are alright, sometimes engaging, sometimes not so much.

I took Historical Approaches to Feminist Questions with Professor Ko and loved every minute of it! (for some reason CULPA's not showing this class, but I wanted to make sure Professor Ko got a good review somewhere on CULPA!) This woman is everything you could want in a professor: she's incredibly intelligent and knows exactly what she's talking about, she treats her students like adults and allows them to have their own insights about which she is happy to have conversations, and she's seriously funny, although her humor always catches you off guard, since she's not the type you'd expect to make the types of jokes that she does. The class was great. Professor Ko assigned a lot of reading for each meeting (about 50-100 pages per week) but she speaks so passionately about all of the readings that she really makes you want to stay caught up. Seriously, I hardly did any CC reading this semester, but was happy to read 50 pages about gender differences across cultures even when I knew I wouldn't be required to prove to her I had done it. I found the class pretty enlightening; we talked about all these different ways of thinking about things that seem so natural to us and Professor Ko really got us to queer our perceptions of what we identify as normal. I would definitely recommend this class to anyone. The material was interesting and the professor was remarkable.

Though her teaching methods are rather unconventional, Professor Ko is extremely intelligent, and her lectures are insightful and engaging (sometimes she brings on the sarcasm too). She teaches history with an anthropological bent, which does need some getting use to, but the readings are interesting and the time period (Ming to late Qing) is fascinating to explore. Prof. Ko is also really nice and sweet! She occasionally brings quirky artifacts to class, like the time she came back from a trip to somewhere in Asia (forgot the exact place), and gave us paper charms from the temple she visited. A class with Prof. Ko at some point in your experience at Columbia/Barnard is definitely recommended!

Ko is not only a brilliant intellectual she is also an amazing and creative professor who is totally dedicated to her students. The best thing about this course and Ko in general is that she abhors the monotonous analytical essay writing that we all have learned the formula for and demands her students to be creative and go outside their comfort zone. The assignments for this class were loosely defined and she genuinely wanted to be surprised with our definitions. Her classroom is an open, creative, and thriving home for intellectual discussion, and her clothes are AMAZING.

Professor Ko rocks-- she's an antropologist teaching history, and her resulting cultural emphasis makes class doubly interesting. plus her outfits are sublime-- total fashion plate academic chick. her syllabus was great for this class-- mixing more conventional historical accounts with chinese murder mysteries. plus, well, she's chinese. she knows.

Weekly readings (150ish pages) + reading notes (flexible, in whatever format you want, whatever reasonable length, posted on courseworks, graded on completion), 1 cooking lab in a group of 3 (you get a stipend for the ingredients, cook a dish, and write a 3 page journal documenting the process), 1 final project that includes a 10-page write up (whatever topic you want, you can be as creative as you want). Everything was graded generously. If you show true effort, you will get a good grade.

I took this class spring 2015. A wonderful professor that engages the class well. Jokes and witty observations abound. Incredibly manageable workload and solicits participation well for a large lecture (about 60 students). Topics included gender and family in dynastic China, the Republic, Mao and the present. Focus on the intellectual underpinnings of gender and family and their transformations, particularly in the later half of the class as China moves to "modernize" (scarequotes should be much, much larger). A bit of an anthropological bent as the course approached topics in the modern and present eras. Papers were short (about two pages) but to do well you often needed to write three or even four pages. Final paper (no exam) was 10 to 12 pages, no outside research necessary. A TA grades your work occasionally but I never spoke to her, ever. A great class if you're an underclassman looking for a gentle introduction to history and history writing, given the fact that there was no outside research component (all papers were based solely on the readings and lectures). Interestingly, the class was practically all women save for a handful of men, of which I was one. I heartily recommend this course to men, if only because the professor is so engaging, and because it counts as a breadth course if you're specializing in Europe or the Americas (this is certainly one of the better br…

Well, the people in the class were all pretty weird, but what do you expect from a Barnard Fashion course. Ko was knowledgeable, kind, and organized. I believe that she is probably quite intelligent and eloquent, unfortunately, she seemed to feel that she needed to dumb everything down for the audience (she was probably right). The readings are all pretty interesting and you will learn stuff, but it is kinda sad that there is no pressure/arena in which to take the ideas further till the final.

Prof. Ko is interesting. She's not quite as eccentric or unapproachable that the other reviewers make her out to be. She's only interested in your arguments so don't just randomly piece together things without any rhyme or reason. That being said, she's pretty open to your interpretation to chinese culture, because she assumes that you didn't take a previous class in chinese history so any oddball theories (backed up with evidence) are pretty much okay with her. As for her "unusual" mannerisms, there's no rule that you have to look at your students for the entire lecture. She has a different style for teaching, learning, etc., and she even stated that she's a "contrarian". All in all, I found her class to be fun, somewhat "eye-opening" and relatively easy.