Dissent, Injustice and the Making of America
Winter 2004
Weekly Seminar Papers
 

Each Monday students must prepare a concise one to two page paper that responds thoughtfully to the coming week’s reading. The papers should be in the form of short argumentative essays.
 

Requirements:

1. Hard copies of weekly papers must be one to two pages, double-spaced, printed with a 12-point front, Times Roman or Times New Roman, and stapled if necessary (preferably print front and back to avoid wasting paper). They are due in Monday seminar at 1:00 p.m. (Please note that this is a change from the original instructions in the syllabus).

2. Every week, turn in one printed copy of the paper to your faculty leader at seminar. Emailed or posted copies may not substitute for the hard copy.

3. Every other week, if it is your turn, post your response paper in Web Crossing before you come to seminar. Do not attempt to double-space your paper in Web Crossing. Do, however, make sure that there is double spacing between paragraphs. Instructions for making that happen are at the Web Crossing site.
 

Writing Structure and Style:

1. The response papers must be in the form of argumentative essays. The goal is to assert and support one main argument or point about the reading. Introduce your argument or thesis in the first paragraph. Normally, the very first sentence in your paper is your thesis statement. If for any reason you place your thesis sentence elsewhere, please underline it. If you do not underline anything, your faculty and peer reviewers will assume that your first sentence is your thesis and will mark/comment on your paper accordingly.

Think about your paper before you write it. Develop and answer one clear question. To develop a thesis statement, it may be helpful to ask yourself such questions as: How does the reading reflect the larger themes of the program? What is one general thing you’ve concluded about the reading? What is the author trying to accomplish? What is one thing the reading clearly suggests or means? What is one thing you disagree with? 2. In the remaining paragraphs, you should prove your case. To do that, you will combine specific evidence or examples from the text with your own analytical reasoning to convince your reader that your argument is correct.

3. Because the paper is short, avoid quotes as much as possible. Use evidence to support, not to make, your arguments.

For example, if you were arguing that Judge Clayton was unfair to the defendants in the Abrams trial, you would describe two or three specific things the judge unfairly said or did. You would use your own words, not those of the judge or the book’s author. 3. Summarize and restate your argument as a conclusion in one or two comprehensive sentences at the end.

4. Avoid unsupported opinion or moralizing. Do not use first or second person grammar (I, me, mine, we, us, our, ours, you, your, yours). Use only the third person (he, his, him, she, hers, her, it, its, they, their, them).

5. Avoid passive verb constructions so that the subject of the sentence is not passive with respect to the verb). Say, "The U.S. attorney charged them," not "They were charged by the district attorney.")