Together we will systematically study selected readings. Thus, you will write a total of 9 short papers for this seminar. This will serve as the concluding written work for the course. These original essays are to entail critical reading, critical thinking and analysis, and a scholarly write-up, characteristic of conventional sociology. Nor, importantly, are the essays to be book or article reviews.
Essays are to be done independently and are to be original work.
Papers should demonstrate careful and thorough reading of the assigned material as well as develop a focus on an issue, idea, problem, theme, contradiction, or any other element in the readings which strikes you as significant. The objective is that, as the course progresses, you will become more sophisticated and thorough in your analyses, attempting to integrate various materials read and discussed. Using a sociological perspective, engage the scholars in a dialogue with each other and with yourself. Most of the readings will both overlap and build on each other even as they may differ in some major ways. As the semester progresses, then, you will write more comparatively, discussing the readings in the context of earlier readings, class discussions, and material from outside the course.