As part of your writing for The Ireland Program you will write six Response Papers in both Fall and Winter Quarters. Response Papers in The Ireland program serve three main purposes: 1) to prepare for seminar with a burning question you have explored and given some thought, 2) to practice and develop your ability to write clearly and creatively while engaging with a text, and 3) to share how a given text does or does not resonate with your own experience or ways of looking at the world. Response Papers must be double spaced, one to two pages in length, and in a reasonable font (such as Times New Roman 12).

In preparation for writing you might ask yourself how the text connects with the themes of the program. Your writing (and seminar) contributions should deepen and broaden our engagement with a topic, not shut down our engagement, or veer us off on a tangent. In preparation for writing, you might consider these following prompts (courtesy Patrick Hill, Ireland Program faculty emeritus):

• What three important insights, facts, or perspectives did I learn from the book that I will surely want to keep in mind?

• What burning question do I need to discuss in seminar?

• Were I the type of person who might dismiss an entire book because of one major error, unsupported thesis, or un-emphasized dimension I would focus on…

You must be specific about what in the text is prompting your response. That means page numbers! All ideas, quotes, paraphrases, or summaries from the text or any other source must be cited with a page number (or lecture date). In addition, don’t forget to fully introduce the author. What is the author’s background? Why should we pay attention to what the author has written? (In some cases the question may be, “What makes this text important?”) Unless the author is the subject of your response paper, you should be able to adequately introduce her in a couple of sentences or less.

It is also vitally important to bring up any insights you have in your personal experience that reflect directly on the text, and on the themes of the program as a whole, but be careful not to get so wrapped up in telling your own story that you neglect to engage fully with the text (and your audience). In other words, stay on task and show that you read the book!