Assignments

Assignments/Evaluation

Reading and Participation (includes attendance and response posts): 40%

Drafts of Senior Research Paper, Progress, and Writing Group participation: 20%

Final Senior Research Paper: 40%

 

READING AND PARTICIPATION

It is imperative that all students do the assigned reading before the class period for which it is due. Please also bring the session’s assigned reading to class.

Participation: Since this is a seminar, the success of the class depends on your active participation. I expect you to come to class having read and thought about all of the materials due for that session, including the response posts of your colleagues. This means being ready for discussion every time.

Response Posts: At the beginning of the course, you will be assigned to Group 1, 2 or 3 and will be responsible for writing a short (1 or 2 paragraphs) informal response to the reading for a particular session and posting it to our class blog. These posts are intended less as “response papers” and more as short pieces of critical analysis. Do not summarize the text; rather, find a compelling moment in the text, a running theme, a tension, or a connection to something else we have read in class and explore it as carefully as you can in your post. Think of this response post as the beginning of a larger discussion for the class – in fact, you can pose a series of discussion questions for the rest of the class as part of your response post.

Attendance: You are required to attend class, but you may miss up to one meeting – excused, or unexcused – without penalty. After this, your overall grade for the course will drop by one sub-grade increment (ex. If you have otherwise earned an A in the course, you will receive an A-, etc.). If you miss class, it is your responsibility to inform yourself of any assignments/handouts/ changes to the syllabus you will have missed by asking your fellow students and getting notes from them.

SENIOR ESSAY

Your Senior Research Paper (20 pages double spaced, excluding bibliography and title page) is the culmination of an entire quarter of original research and thinking. Your research paper (topic to be chosen in conversation with me) will address and analyze a particular historical or contemporary case study pertaining to the themes of the course. For example, you could use a 1993 religious freedom case on animal sacrifice in Florida, or do a close reading of the film The Serpent and the Rainbow and reactions to it, to study how Haitian vodou is constructed as an Other to proper religion in the United States.

Learning Outcomes: By the end of the course, you should be able to demonstrate a thorough understanding of the theoretical concepts that we have discussed as a class in our assigned readings. You should also be able to do some original research and gather primary evidentiary material in ethnographic, archival, or textual form. Your research paper will bring together these two forms of learning. In addition to demonstrating a thorough understanding of the theoretical concepts that we have discussed as a class, you must show that you have thought about and engaged these concepts via your research on your unique topic. You will be evaluated on your research, argument, and analysis of a particular historical or contemporary case study.

Disciplinary Communication: The course will also teach you the conventions of writing in the discipline of anthropology, and your Senior Essay should demonstrate your grasp of those conventions. To that end, we will workshop individual drafts as a group and discuss discipline-specific expectations and conventions of data-presentation, argumentation, use of evidence, citation, etc. In order to model these disciplinary conventions, we will also use reading assignments to discuss these issues throughout the course.

WRITING GROUPS AND DRAFTS

After you have turned in your topics (due Week 3), I will assign you to a 3-4-person writing group based on your research interests. In addition to turning in the outlines and drafts of your senior research paper to me, you will turn copies in to your writing group as well. You will be responsible for providing thoughtful and constructive criticism on each assignment to each group member in typed, written form (either “track changes” on Microsoft Word that can be printed or comments in a separate word document listing page numbers and specific sentences/paragraph of the draft on which you are commenting). At the end of the quarter, you will write an evaluation for each group member discussing on how helpful her/his comments were to you.

Since writing is an dynamic process, when you turn in your senior essay at the end of the quarter, you will also turn in a portfolio that includes: all of your drafts and outlines that your group members and I have commented upon, as well as your evaluations of your group members. You will be graded on how well you have incorporated our comments; you will also be graded on the thoughtfulness and helpfulness of your comments on your group members’ work.