You will turn in two critical response papers over the course of the semester. Each paper will be no more than five pages long.1 You will turn in one paper in each of these windows:
Each paper will consist of a critical assessment of one of the course readings (required or recommended). Your paper must be turned in within a week of the reading it responds to. For example, if your first response paper addresses a reading from the week of January 26–28, the latest it can be turned in is Thursday, February 4.
Late papers will not be accepted—and thus will receive a grade of zero—unless you have documentation of a medical or family emergency.
A critical response paper makes an argument. It is not a summary—in fact, it should be written under the assumption that the reader is familiar with the work it is responding to. To be “critical” of a work does not mean to be “against” it, but rather to reflect on it in a well-informed, objective way. Your criticisms must be grounded in reason and evidence, not personal taste.
Here are some examples of the kind of argument a critical response paper might make. This is not an exhaustive list; criticism can take many forms.
For theoretical readings:
Using historical evidence to evaluate the plausibility of one of its assumptions
Proposing an important factor that the theory neglects and showing how that would change its conclusions
Characterizing an additional implication of the theory that the author does not discuss
For historical readings:
Pursuing an alternative interpretation of the evidence the paper presents
Evaluating how the case fits (or fails to fit) a particular theoretical model
Arguing, based on a theoretical model, for how the case would have played out differently if some factor had been different
I will focus on the clarity and quality of the argument when grading a paper. I recommend George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” (http://tinyurl.com/orwell46) as a guide to clear writing.
Page lengths quoted assume a double-spaced document with 12-point text and 1-inch margins. I reserve the right not to read any content past five pages and to reduce your grade for exceeding the page limit. ↩