Each week from September 13 to October 25, 2 students will serve as discussion leaders, one for primary sources and one for secondary sources. The night before the discussion (deadline: Sunday 10pm), both of these students will post response papers (600 words), which will serve as prompts/handouts for their discussions. Go to "Discussions > Response Papers > [weekly topic]," and title your paper with your own name.
This assignment asks you to respond in focused detail to one of the texts assigned for the week; I see it as practice in developing an argument carefully, on a small canvas. It will also allow me to help you with your writing on a regular basis. The paper will be keyed to the discussion leading: each week, one student will lead the discussion of one or more primary sources, and one will do one or more secondary sources; the response paper writers should include, toward the end of their paper, some talking points and questions that will help guide our discussion. Length: about 600 words.
Everyone in the class will be required to read both of the response papers before the class, since they are intended as stimuli for our discussion. Although you are not required to reply to the papers on Canvas, I strongly encourage you to do so.
Additional guidelines (from an email I sent to the first 2 presenters):
I guess the basic thing I want to emphasize, as I think I did in class, is that these papers are intended less as ends in themselves than as focused, idea-generating papers that bridge to a good class discussion. As such, you don't need to repeat or summarize the main points of your sources (which wouldn't be possible in a short paper anyway). You don't have time for an introductory paragraph, so dive right in. The main thing is to find places in the text that seem to raise a question, to confuse, to connect with something else inside or outside the reading, to contradict themselves, to touch on a larger point than it might seem, or otherwise to point to a discussable point or question. Note that the assignment includes the following: "the response paper writers should include, toward the end of their paper, some talking points and questions that will help guide our discussion." So the content of your paper can help guide your concluding questions, and vice versa.
There's obviously lots here, both for primary and secondary sources. The other thing I want to emphasize is that you should aim for depth rather than breadth here. There's no way you can get to all the readings, so focus on some interesting ones. Some of the best papers have done a bit of connecting or comparing of 2 or more sources (e.g., a point that's made in a couple of places, in different ways); on the other hand, some of the best ones have just picked a single source and drilled down. That applies to both primary and secondary sources. If you finish your paper and haven't gotten to something interesting from another source, you can just add it as one of your questions at the end.
I hope that has helped rather than muddying the waters; please don't hesitate to hit me up with any questions.
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