The assignments for Short Papers I, II, and III, will be posted here at least two weeks before they are due:
Short Paper I (due February 17)
Due: Monday, May 18 (12 noon PDT): Web page
Due: Friday, May 22 (12 noon PDT): Written paper
For more information on the nature of these assignments, please see Course Requirements and Grading.
You are required to participate in our class discussion at least once a week. Your participation will focus on (a) the assigned reading and study questions for that week and (b) additional questions raised in the weekly lecture notes.
For more information on this element of the course, please see Course Requirements and Grading and Discussion.
All required reading for the course is on the World Wide Web. For the complete list of assignments for the course, see Course Syllabus: Reading Assignments. At the end of the articles on the class Web site you will find a list of study questions to help you work through the reading independently. We are also reading a few things located on other web sites. For those, you will be sent study questions via e-mail.
You will receive "lecture notes" on each reading assignment via e-mail on Monday morning for the reading assignment listed for that date. Your discussion that week should focus on that article(s). Lecture notes are also posted on the class discussion group and on the class web site on Monday morning: Lecture Notes (The text is identical in all three postings.)
You probably will want to print out the readings so you can study them. But you should also plan to go through each reading assignment on-line, as most include many hyperlinks to other resources on the Web, especially additional information about the art work, artists, and philosophers discussed in the readings.
As in most philosophy courses, the volume of reading is relatively small, but it is demanding. You should expect to work through each assignment several times to fully understand the material. Especially if you are new to philosophy, the lecture notes and class on-line discussion will assist you in understanding each of the articles.
Good understanding of the reading assignments will be essential in writing the Short Papers and completing the Final Project.