Course Requirements
Participation in class discussion, worth 10% of the course grade. This will be
conducted via the Discussion tool on Canvas. Each Sunday night (beginning
Sunday April 5th), we will post a passage from the coming week’s reading.
Between that time and Thursday night of that week, every student is required
(1) to post at least one question about this text and (2) to respond to
at least one other student’s question. The questions do not have to be
complicated or profound, and the responses do not have to be long or
contain any definitive answers, but both should show at least some thought
about/attempt to understand the text. Your TA will check to make sure your
question and answer meet this criterion (not intended to be a high bar at
all).
A midterm assignment (your choice of a take-home exam or a 4–6
page paper) due Tuesday, November 4 (35% of the course grade), a final
assignment (your choice of a take-home exam or a 4–6 page paper) (35% of
the grade), due Tuesday, December 9, and a brief in-person final exam
(20% of the grade), also due on Tuesday, December 9. At the in-person
final you will be asked some questions about your own responses to the
take-home assignments. (Note this means that, although the take-home final
assignment is not due in finished form until the end of the day, you will need to
have a reasonably good idea of your response before you come in to the
final.)
Both take-home assignments will be available on-line, and there will be links
to them from this syllabus as well as from my main course page. I will discuss the
assignments in class when the due date draws near. You can find answers to
some commonly asked questions about my assignments and grading in my
FAQ.
Papers are to be handed in, as attachments, via the “Assignments” tool on
Canvas. Please submit in PDF or in a format easily convertible to PDF (e.g.,
MSWord). The system will accept late submissions, but late papers may not
receive full credit. The system is
not set up to allow resubmissions: once you press
the “submit” button, it will not let you change your response. If, however, you
mistakenly submit something and want to change it, please contact me and I can
make an exception.
Please do not plagiarize. If you have any questions about plagiarism and
related issues, please see
https://guides.library.ucsc.edu/citesources. To
find out what happens if you are accused of plagiarism, see the academic
misconduct policy:
https://ue.ucsc.edu/academic-misconduct.
AI policy: I encourage the use of AI assistance with proper caution
(i.e., keeping in mind that current AI is often wrong). You may use AI
assistance basically in any way that would not constitute cheating if you
used a human for the same thing. Similarly, you should cite the AI in
cases where you would cite a human. If in doubt, feel free to ask me for
clarification.
