Curtis Brown
Spring, 2003

INFORMATION ON WRITING THE PAPERS

mechanical details

Papers should be typed double-spaced.

Short papers should be between 3 and 5 pages in length. . (And . . . one-inch margins, 10 or 12-point type, no weird fonts, etc.).

Give references for any sources you use, including the class texts. Citations of specific ideas or arguments should include page numbers (so I can look them up easily).

Due dates:

• First Short Paper: Draft due to Janie and/or me by Tuesday, February 4. Final draft due to me by Tuesday, February 11.
• Second Short Paper: Final draft due Tuesday, March 4. Rough draft encouraged but not required.
• Third Short Paper: Final draft due Wednesday, March 31. Rough draft encouraged but not required.

evaluation

1. The paper should have a thesis or main point. Several kinds of thesis are possible. Your thesis might be interpretive, suggesting what we should understand the meaning or significance of a literary work to be in light of other things we have read. It might be comparative, contrasting the views of two literary works, or analyzing the relationship between a literary piece and an expository piece. Or the thesis might be more narrowly philosophical, considering a view discussed in one or more of the readings and arguing for or against that view. There are lots of other possibilities also. Just keep in mind that you need to have some sort of main claim whose defense requires close attention to one or more of our texts. In general, the more specific the thesis the better
   
   
2. Argument. Your paper needs to be more than an autobiographical account of your experience in reading the material. You need to offer reasons for your position or against the one you are attacking. One very good strategy students often do not use enough is to think of possible objections to your view and respond to them. In addition, if you are criticizing someone else's work, it is a very good idea to discuss how you think the writer would defend his or her position against your criticisms. This helps to deepen your argument. Contrary to what some students fear, it also makes your argument more persuasive. People sometimes worry that raising objections to their own view, or supplying responses an opponent might make, just needlessly makes trouble for their thesis. But a sophisticated reader will be thinking of objections to your view while reading your paper; such a reader will be helped if you show how you would deal with these objections. (It may also help to keep in mind that the goal of these papers is to work out a position as carefully and completely as you can; it is more a search for the truth than an attempt to persuade. The more objections you consider and respond to, and the more fair you are to your opposition, the more cogent and thoughtful your own view is likely to be.)
   
3. Clarity is vitally important: you need to write carefully and organize your paper very explicitly. If necessary, you should ruthlessly sacrifice elegance of style in favor of glaringly obvious signposting: for example, "The second objection to ethical egoism is that it is not universalizable." That's not a great sentence, but it gets the point across clearly. Avoid vague or overly general claims. For example: if you say that something is "true by definition," you need to state precisely what definition you have in mind, and explain carefully how the proposition in question follows from this definition. If you say that a certain view is "contradictory," explain carefully what contradiction it leads to and how. More generally, if you say that a particular view is "absurd" or "ludicrous" or "crazy" -- terms which it might be better to avoid, actually -- explain carefully what absurd consequences it has and how those consequences follow from the view. That a view strikes you as crazy is not an argument! You need to convince the reader that it should strike him or her as crazy too.
   
4. It is a requirement for the papers that they include some use of the reading material for the course. You might criticize one or more arguments found in the reading, or defend such an argument against a possible objection, or adjudicate a dispute between two pieces we have read. But there needs to be some sort of response to the reading.

remarks on writing the papers

1. Important point about secondary sources: keep in mind that what is of interest is not the views they hold but rather the arguments they offer for them. Appeals to authority carry no weight at all. That Perry says information ought to be free is, by itself, of no interest; what is interesting and may be worth discussing are the reasons he offers for this view.
   
2. It's a good idea to jot down ideas, questions, and criticisms of the readings we are studying as you go. This will help you master the material, will help you understand and contribute to class discussion, and (the reason I mention it here) will give you a good starting point for the paper. The very first draft of the paper can be fairly impressionistic and stream-of-consciousness; sometimes it is helpful in getting started to just sit down and start writing, even if you have no very clear idea of where the paper is going. BUT, by the time you turn in the official first draft of the paper, it should be well-organized and clearly presented; it should be clear from the outset where the paper is going and how it will get there. This means that the official "first draft" should really be at least a second draft. The better the draft you turn in, the more valuable the feedback you get will be, since your commentator will not need to waste time making points you should have thought of yourself.
   
3. Academic integrity is taken very seriously at Trinity (as elsewhere). Be very careful not to plagiarize, not to treat someone else's words or ideas as your own. Make sure you don't inadvertently violate Trinity's policy. Copying an entire paper of course is plagiarism -- but so is copying or closely paraphrasing a single sentence. If someone else makes a point in a particularly elegant or entertaining way it is all right to make use of their words, but only if you enclose them in quotation marks and give a complete reference indicating where they came from. If I discover that a paper has been plagiarized in whole or part, I must, according to University policy, either give the paper a failing grade, reduce the course grade by one letter grade, or give the student a failing grade in the course. I must notify the student in writing, and send copies of this notification to my chairman and the Vice President for Academic Affairs.