requirements

Both attendance and participation are required. I don't usually require either, but this course has different goals than your ordinary philosophy course, goals whose satisfaction obliges you to be present and actively participating.

Weekly writing assignments (some ungraded) are designed to help you develop your analytic and critical writing skills. We will frequently write or critique writing in-class. It's a writing course! - you must actually do all the writing assignments to receive credit.

assignments

Here is a rough idea of what the graded assignments will be:

1. Two short précis (~10% each)
2. Two short essays (~20% each)
1. Essay revisions
2. Peer review of second essay
3. Response to peer
3. Paper (~30%)
   1. Précis
   2. Presentation
   3. Draft
   4. Peer review
   5. Final
4. Participation (~10%)

I say 'rough' (why the single quotation marks?) because the number and nature of assignments isn't cast in stone - we'll determine what sorts of assignments are appropriate as we proceed.

*Fine Print

In class I distributed an orange paper with Pomona's statement on academic honesty. You are expected to abide by the code, and we'll be discussing the application of the code to specific assignments as they approach. In brief, any work that is submitted as your own but written in whole or in part by someone else is plagiarism. Just for the record: violation of the honesty code results in an F for the course and is subject to further disciplinary action.

Lateness is bad, very bad. Missing deadlines makes life more difficult for you and for me; more practically, because of the steady stream of assigned writing in this course, it will be rather difficult to catch up. So: no late work will be accepted. I will of course make exceptions for documented emergencies.