AMES-432S

STORYWORLDS

Not in Fall 2026

AMES · Taught by Chow, Eileen · Last offered Spring 2025

Overview

Feedback is mostly positive. The strongest signal is that students say they actually learn something useful. Best for students who want substance, not a disposable elective. The sample is still thin, so treat this as directional rather than definitive.

DepartmentAMES

Terms offeredSpring

Typical enrollment17–17

Semesters of data1

3.3

Hrs / week

Responses

Enrollment

41%

Response Rate

Evaluation Scores

Overall quality

Teaching, content, and experience combined.

5.0

12345

Intellectually stimulating

Challenges students to think deeply.

4.9

12345

Instructor effectiveness

Explains concepts and facilitates learning.

5.0

12345

Difficulty

Higher means harder.

2.3

12345

Feedback Analysis

Feedback Analysislow

Analysis based on student evaluations

Based on 23 comments across 1 sections

Student Reports

How hard is the A?

More reachable A

Student comments make the grading bar sound relatively reachable. This reads more like a course where steady work is rewarded than one where students describe the A as unusually hard to land.

Homework Load

Moderate homework load

Homework load looks moderate. The recurring signal is steady weekly work, but not a course that turns every assignment into a grind.

Lecture Load

Lighter lecture burden

Student comments describe this as more discussion-, seminar-, or workshop-driven than lecture-dependent. The lecture burden itself does not sound like the main source of friction.

Strengths

• Students repeatedly say the course teaches something concrete, whether that is content mastery, research skill, or a strong foundation.

• Discussion is a clear strength; students repeatedly describe the class conversation as engaging and useful.

Tradeoffs

• There is no single dominant complaint theme, but the feedback is not uniformly glowing either.

Best fit for

Best for students who want substance, not a disposable elective.

Watch out for

• Most of the signal comes from a limited sample, so be careful about over-generalizing.

• A large share of the evidence comes from one instructor's version of the course, so this may not generalize cleanly.

Student Responses

How to break down a storyworld, the fundamental elements of a story that change with time and place, and the different blueprints of storytelling across history.

Spring 2025 · Chow, Eileen

I learned so much about stories and how to effectively convey narrative through my writing. I learned how to dive into a story and examine the different parts and how they intertwine to create the masterpieces I grew up learning. I feel like my critical thinking skills also really improved during this class, thinking about the ways that characters are strategically created with goals in mind in order to demonstrate morals.

Spring 2025 · Chow, Eileen

I learned the different ways stories and the worlds of said stories are constructed. It's a very complicated art but was super intriguing to learn about. Also learned about different modes of storytelling and types of story genres.

Spring 2025 · Chow, Eileen

How to analyze stories across media formats How to think about the ways in which a story changes when it is released to the world ("fan fiction", etc) How to dive deep into a specific story and pick out all of its pieces

Spring 2025 · Chow, Eileen

I learned how to analyze stories, and what stories are present in my life that I wasn't aware of.

Spring 2025 · Chow, Eileen

Rating History

Rating history

Error bars show \u00B11 std dev

Term	Instructor	Overall	Difficulty	Hrs/wk	Enrolled
Spring 2025	Chow, Eileen 4.3Rate My ProfessorsQuality4.3Difficulty1.9Would retake100%Based on 16 ratingsClick to view on RMP →	5.0	2.3	3.3	17

Instructor

Chow, EileenAMES

Also teaches

AMES-107 INTRO TO EAST ASIAN CULTURES4.7 AMES-120CN ASIAN FOODWAYS IN MIGRATION4.7 AMES-335 CHINATOWNS: A CULTURAL HISTORY4.9 AMES-551S TRANSLATION: THEORY/PRAXIS4.3 AMES-560S READING THE CHINESE NOVEL4.6