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Assignments

The assignments in this class are designed to help you foster your facility with the literature in the area, to identify their relevance to your research interests, and to further develop key academic skills such as scoping a literature review and constructing a solid argument.

Readings

The most important work you will do in this course is the course readings. For each class, there is a list of required topical readings that will build your understanding of the topic. There is sometimes one additional scholarly infrastructure reading, which is focused on a particular scholarly skill which we will be covering in the upcoming class. You are expected to read the readings before that scheduled class and, for the topical readings, to have taken notes on them which you can refer to in course discussion. My recommendation is that in addition to in-line notes, you also write a one-paragraph summary of the overall argument each reading makes; as we will discuss in class, this will make it much easier to build on that reading in further coursework and in your ongoing research.

All required topical articles will be uploaded to Perusall (see below). Links to most articles are also available on the course schedule; if you are not in Cornell networks, you can install the Passkey extension to access those which are not under open-access licenses.

Reading responses

Each week, we will develop a group understanding and discusssion of the topical readings prior to the course. To allow us to share comments and ideas in-text, we are using the software Perusall, which allows you to annotate our reading with comments and questions accessible to all participants in the course. We will use Perusall to foster this discussion each week that there are articles assigned (Note this excludes the week of March 9, when we have no readings assigned, and March 23 and March 30, when we will be reading books). Perusall is available through our course Canvas site.

My minimum expectation as an instructor is that you will add at least 2 comments or questions to each assigned article by the midnight before the class where it will be discussed (i.e., Tuesday night). You will also respond to comments made by at least 3 different classmates by the start of class on Wednesday (note this means at least 3 total over the full set of readings, not per reading). Note that the due date for the first week of class is exceptional; you may comment and respond to those articles by Feb 2.

Over the course of the semester, you may skip two weeks of comments/responses without any affect on your grade. You are expected to read, but not respond, to the methodological readings (the ones labeled “scholarly infrastructure” on the syllabus).

Perusall has its own grading algorithm which was developed for undergraduates, which we may or may not find adequate to our purposes for this course. I will review Perusall’s scoring with you after a few weeks and decide whether to stick with it, tinker with it, or adopt an alternative scoring mechanism.

Discussion

This is a seminar, and your engagement with our course discussions is important for the success of the course and for our mutual learning. By engagement, I mean contributing to the development of an ongoing course conversation, which can include offering observations on the course material, asking follow-up questions, synthesizing comments made by others, circling back to remind us all of points previously made that are newly relevant to the discussion, and holding space for other students’ contributions. The quality of engagement matters more than the quantity. My expectation of discussion is that we engage with each other and with the texts in a way that is constructive, clearly respects each person’s inherent worth, expresses one’s viewpoint in a way that can be heard, and makes the effort to understand perspectives expressed imperfectly. I recognize that participants arrive in a seminar with varying senses of license to express themselves, and encourage us all to consider how we can contribute to all having space to contribute and be heard.

In each class, two students will be asked to keep notes on the discussion. These notes will be made available to the whole course as a shared resource, including those who are ill and unable to attend the class.

Final paper

Your work in this course will build up to a final course paper (10-15 pages; 300 words per page), which is an extended essay reflecting on questions arising for you in the course, which I encourage you to discuss within the context of your ongoing research interests. Your course paper should build on related research and cite at least 15 scholarly works. At least 8 of the articles you cite should come from the course syllabus (required or non-required readings). At least 3 of the articles you cite should come from readings you have identified yourself through a literature review.

We will build up to this final paper through the following milestone assignments:

  • One-page brainstorm of paper topics
  • Formal proposal for final paper
  • List of outside readings that you are considering drawing on
  • Annotated bibliography
  • First draft outline of paper

The primary purposes of milestones are to help you structure your work towards the final paper, and to provide opportunities for early feedback.  A milestone will receive full credit when it is submitted on time and demonstrates a reasonable effort.  To provide you with flexibility in the case of personal challenges, you may hand in up to two of your milestones up to two weeks late for 80% credit on each. Late milestones will not receive feedback.

You will present your paper orally and get your colleagues’ feedback at our last class meeting.

Grade breakdown

  • 15% Reading comments and responses
  • 15% In-class engagement and discussion
  • 20% Milestones
  • 10% Final paper presentation
  • 40% Final paper