The syllabus for this class was not awful, but the way that many texts were spoken on and discussed made me continuously ill. Minorities were often the topic of the class (Bristow is white btw) and in his eyes they can only exist as people of struggle. Black people could not exist as free people without the help of White people, immigrants only come from countries that are dangerous and never feel welcomed in their own communities, lesbians only want to be men. This was a large majority of the syllabus and what Bristow took away from the readings, if he even did ANY close reading at all. Lectures went over and it often feels as if he focuses more on what historical tidbit he thinks is interesting or the author's struggling parents than the readings themselves. The structure was extremely unorganized and quite a few of the readings ended up being omitted or even added as extra material (in the form of recordings posted less than a week before the final).

Bristow is not helpful in any way with student's writing, and instead complained about the abundance of low grades this quarter. He believes there is a standard to be upheld at UCLA; but only by the students, because him as a professor, he's sooooo perfect! There's no way he could improve at all! Don't ask him about your feedback, I hear he will be awful to you.

The really saddening part of this class was that while the colored people, immigrants and the lesbians struggled internally with their identity, the gay white men experienced struggles because of society. There was no real internal struggle, and while the colored gay men's stories always ended with them still mentally unsatisfied, the white, gay men's stories ended with them mentally uplifted, discovering their struggle was only placed on them by the boundaries of societal opinions.

The next major qualm I had with this class was its paper topics. Topics were trivial, and often worded to make them seem smarter than they are, and you won't really get paper #1 back in time for paper #2 but it's okay! That is completely on purpose. You will not emerge from this class a better writer, or feel like your writing has improved. In fact, you may hate your writing and loose all confidence. It's almost as if he wants you to feel awful about your papers, with no change of getting better, or even knowing what you need to improve on.

Just glad I've learned my lesson: I am actively avoiding this distinguished professor and his classes like the plague.

I've never written a review on here before but this is singlehandedly the worst class I have ever taken at UCLA, and y'all need to be warned. Usually, even the worst teachers have one redeeming quality, but Bristow has none. Maybe the only thing I can think of about this man that isn’t completely terrible was when he attempted an American accent when reading from a novel. But that was only once. The rest of his class was just hell. I’m splitting this up into a few main sections because there’s just too much to say.

Racism and other bigotry:

Even though Bristow sees himself as progressive, he is very much the epitome of white gay man who thinks they are 100% woke and an activist just because they are gay. The amount of micro aggressions (and macroaggressions, because some of these I really have no clue how he didn’t hear himself) that he would spew during his discussions of race and other topics related to marginalized communities was so great that I started a page in my notebook dedicated to writing them down. Here are his most memorable quotes (keeping in mind I only started this Week 7 and only went to class until the end of Week 9, so this is just 3 weeks worth of content):
- When talking about Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun”, specifically a scene that discusses Beneatha straightening her natural hair, decides to go on a tangent about the importance of the Afro during the Black Power movement. But then he said “would we think anything about an afro today? I mean, it’s just a hairstyle right, just a hairstyle.” Absolutely ignorant of him to just brush aside the hair discrimination that Black people still face today, where people can literally lose their jobs because of their Afros. We are not in some weird post-racial society.
- Literally only a few minutes later, while discussing Beneatha’s struggle reconciling her American identity and her African heritage as an African American, Bristow decides to talk about his own experience as a British man with Italian heritage. What the fuck? These are not remotely the same. Also it doesn’t always have to be about you.
- When reading out one of Audre Lorde’s poems, he said the g-slur used to refer to the Roma people (despite seeming to know that it’s very offensive since he said in earlier in the quarter that Roma is ‘the most respectful term’ to refer to them). In the same poem, he censored the word “motherfucker” by reading it aloud as “mother f-bomb.” Slurs are okay, it seems, but ‘fuck’ is where we draw the line?
- When talking about the character ‘Xuan Hua’ from Octavia Butler’s “Bloodchild”, he said the name twice, trying to get the right pronunciation (which I think is totally valid, put in the effort) but then decided to ruin everything with his following statement: “It’s very difficult to pronounce these science fiction names.” This is word-for-word what he said. Xuan Hua is literally a Chinese name. Apparently China is fictional now? My friends and I literally just stared at each other in disbelief, because huh???
- Again, said the r-slur used to refer to disabled people. Still censors ‘fuck’, though.
- Once referred to us, the whole class, as “we who were born in the West.” My friend and I just looked at each other, having both been born and raised in 3rd world countries. He is very inclusive <3
- He seems not to realize that Britain has racism too? He said he was ’so shocked at the racial division of labor’ when he first came to the U.S. but never seems to realize he’s a part of the OG colonizers?
I brought up the issues of his first comments about “A Raisin in the Sun” with my TA and she said she would speak to him. I never heard anything about this ever again, so either she never brought it up with him, or he never deemed it important enough to address. He has not recognized the insensitivity of any of these comments so far.

Not a good teacher:

Bristow is not even a good teacher. Every lecture he spent half of his time talking about historical context, which is super important, but maybe it shouldn’t take up the majority of class time during a literature course? Also so much of the context was like ok, fun fact, but definitely not necessary for interpreting the text. He spent half a class going over like 4 reviews of a play instead of talking about the actual thing. He also once gave us the full biography of the author who wrote the quote in the epigraph of the book for some reason? But no worries, because once you actually get to the literature, you’ll learn absolutely nothing! All of this man’s slides were just summaries of the text with fancy words to make it seem like he is actually saying something. There was maybe one sentence or two of surface level analysis during every lecture. Still, he also messes up the analysis by fully giving factually incorrect interpretations of the very works he selected for the syllabus. Eg: During the very first few weeks, he went over the story “The Stolen Bacillus” by H. G. Wells, which is about an anarchist stealing what he thinks is cholera from a bacteriologist’s lab. The twist at the end of the story (spoiler alert) is that it’s actually not cholera at all, but some bacteria that causes blue patches on monkeys, making the end a little humorous. However, Bristow taught the story as if the vial the anarchist had stolen was cholera until the very end? He talked about how morbid it is for the bacteriologist not to care that cholera is now loose in the city except that is just incorrect?? Does this man have reading comprehension skills? Why would he pick this story for the syllabus if he doesn’t even understand what it’s saying?
Also once in class he just said “these references might not be easy to understand “ and proceeded not to explain them. That was kinda funny. Does he know he’s supposed to be teaching?

Rude/ superiority complex:

To top it off, this man is just extremely rude and self centered. I should have seen the first red flag when all his emails (even the MyUcla announcements) included “Distinguished Professor” after his signature. After 38% of the class got a C+ or below on Paper 1, which seems to indicate to me that maybe the problem is with the teaching, he went on a ramble during the start of class about how disappointed he was and how we need to bring those grades up. He then talked about how he got straight-A in colleges because he knew how to write an essay, and so he would help us. His help was just some powerpoint that said “your thesis should be an argument” like duh?? This is 10C? We know how to write a paper.
I decided to go to his office hours once to discuss the comments on my Paper 2 since a lot of them didn’t make sense to me and my TA was already fully booked for the week. Before he even asked what I had doubts about in the comments, he asked me what my GPA was. I told him all As except for one A-, and he went on this huge rant about how students think they deserve As all the time but that in his class we just have to accept that we have these lower grades and blah blah. I had not brought up or complained about my Paper 2 grade at all. He then proceeded to be less than helpful with my doubts, ignoring my questions to focus on how I forgot a word was hyphenated, and just generally was incredibly demeaning and rude. He said, and I quote: “Yes, this is definitely not an A-range paper. It’s a good B at most.” Like ok? How does that help me improve for the next paper at all? Just the overall worst vibes ever.

I think that’s it for the summary but there was so much more! This class made my life into absolute hell and destroyed my mental health completely. I’m never taking a class with Bristow again for as long as I live.
TLDR; racist, talks about unnecessary historical context, only summarizes the texts and sometimes still gets the summaries wrong, rude and cocky when you try to ask for help, terrible grading.

I went into this class feeling pretty nervous about this class; however, it was actually very doable. Going to your TA's office hours is key to doing well in this class as they will provide the best feedback on how to improve. Bristow always made sure to post many different prompts, so it felt like there was always a lot of room to write about what you wanted to. I would say the worst part of the class was the final because (at least for our quarter) it was in-person and you had 3 hours to write 4 short essays. You were not given the prompts beforehand, but you had a general idea of what works could show up on the final, so as long as you knew the general themes and ideas of the works, you were fine. Not my favorite class, but also not as bad as I thought it was going to be!

I'll begin with the pros: this class boasts a fantastic selection of readings from a diverse range of authors. I was genuinely looking forward to the lectures examining the language, subtext, etc., of the various works.

The cons: unfortunately, my hopes were quickly dashed. Where to begin?

-There was virtually no close reading in lecture. Instead, the first half of class was spent discussing the biography of the author's parents, or best friend, or plant, etc. Interesting I guess, but completely unhelpful. The second half of class was spent summarizing the text, with little to know explication. It felt a bit insulting as a student. Yes, I can read, I did the readings, I know what happened. But the professor apparently thinks so little of us that even that is too difficult. That, or this so-called "distinguished professor" simply cannot analyze. Maybe both. I learned more explication-based things about the texts from other students during discussion section than I did from the actual professor. Also, he unfailingly went overtime every week, and while he did cut some readings, he also posted a video of a 75-minute additional lecture we NEEDED to watch–less than a week before the final!

-The grading was horrendous. Apparently, we were the "poorest" writers the professor had ever had. This was a class of 68 students (originally larger but several dropped, I wish I had), a sizable enough group that maybe, just maybe, the paper grades were related to poor teaching as opposed to poor writing. But what do I know, I'm just a student. According to the professor, "we are UCLA students," which means we are held to a higher standard than most. Would this not include professors, then? This also felt vaguely insulting. There are capable students at every university, regardless of prestige or whatever. And on the flip side, everybody is allowed to struggle. Ugh. I was warned by friends to avoid OH with the professor, as he was apparently insolent and unhelpful about the papers. His advice on how to improve our writing felt redundant. Most students have already been through 10A and 10B, we know how papers work!

-Lastly, on several occasions, the professor came across as ignorant. The other reviews on this page mostly cover the things he said. Implicitly bashing minority groups, comparing their struggles to his own (a white man from da uk), the list goes on. I don't think it was the professor's intention to make students uncomfortable, but he desperately needs a reality check.

I was told 10C would be the easiest 10-series English class, but it was quite the opposite.

For this class in particular, I was excited at the very beginning about reading its different readings that explore things like race, identity, etc. It started well until I got back my essay one grade, then that was when I began to question my writing since I never did so poorly on a paper before. Going into the course, I started to notice how irrelevant the professor's teaches are (as he was mainly going on and on about the author's background, what their parents do, etc., and just summarizing the reading itself.) Not going in-depth into the readings too much to confuse me later on when writing my essays. I started to question this class more because of my essay two and three grades (noting that there are three essays in this class, with essay three being worth %30 of your grade while the first two are worth %10) to only end up with Cs. In the lecture itself, after the grades came out, he did a grade breakdown, saying, "this class has more Cs than my previous years, and we need to get this up," blah blah blah. But literally, it spoke volumes when more than %40 of a class with 72 students got this grade, and even more of the course was disappointed for an essay they tried their hardest for. Not to mention, the prompts are not even good. Just basically one-line prompts with a quote at the end of it (like how broad can you even get?)
Friends I had in that class that does excellent in their writing got these same bad grades, and out of the 4 of us, 2 dropped the course because of this reasoning. And even though we all asked for help from the TAs to push us in the right direction, which they tried to do (I guess), but it wasn't worth it, and most of us just got mediocre grades in the long run.
Overall I stayed to get this over with in hopes of passing this class (though I'm not too confident anymore.) I recommend that if your trying to take 10C for your English major, don't do it with this professor; wait until there is another one. Cause I'm telling you, this isn't worth it.

Took it during first quarter of the pandemic. Boring on Zoom but the professor was very accommodating.

Lectures were pretty clear, but he had a tendency to go over time. BLESS though, he posted recordings for everyone who couldn't make it to class. Overall a nice guy.