Reading Responses 40%
Commonplace Books 20%
Seminar Essay 40%
Participation 20%

COURSE BLOG and COMMONPLACE BOOKS
Each week, four or five students will post reading responses on our course blog–and everybody else will post comments in response to at least two posts each week. See Calendar for assignments. Each student will post six responses over the course of the semester. Reading responses are due either the day before or the day of our class meeting (including after class that day). Comments are due by Friday of each week, but I encourage you to post them earlier, so we can all engage in ongoing conversation.

In addition, each student will create a self-authored blog to use as a commonplace book. Critic Sharon Crowley describes the history commonplace books: “In pre-modern times, most rhetors kept written collections of copied passages; these were called florilegia (flowers of reading) in medieval times, and commonplace books during the Renaissance and into the eighteenth century.” Each week, you will post at least one passage from a text that inspires you because of its style, along with a paragraph explaining what aspects of its style inspires you. Passages may be from any text, including but not limited to course readings. In addition, you’ll post reflections about your seminar essays / research projects for the course. The goal is to collect a storehouse of materials that help you think about your goals for your own writing. I will post links to all your commonplace books on the main page of this site, so you can read and comment on each other’s posts–though this is optional.

The blogs and commonplace books are intended to give you a place to write informally, communicate with an audience in mind, experiment with ideas and styles of writing, and digest ideas we explore in the course. Experiment. Have fun. When I evaluate your blogs, I will be looking for sincere effort and critical engagement, not polish, structure, or mechanics.

ATTENDANCE AND PARTICIPATION
Attendance and participation are necessary in order for us to form a productive classroom community, where we all learn from each other. I understand that life will make an occasional absence necessary. Whenever possible, please inform me in advance if you will be absent. In general, plan to attend every class meeting and to arrive on time. Keep in mind also that attendance and participation will comprise a significant portion of your course grade.

DISCUSSION
We all think, learn, perceive, and feel differently. While we can’t experience each other’s mental lives, we can use language to talk and write them. In this course, we’ll do that primarily through discussion of literary and critical readings by authors who write about neurological difference. Some of these conversations may be challenging, partly because there is no perfect language for talking about difference, partly because some readings are politically charged or emotionally raw. I encourage you to speak your minds and to consider other people’s experience when you do. We will all learn more if we are comfortable asking questions, debating when we disagree, acknowledging what we don’t understand, and changing our minds in response to new ideas.

SEMINAR ESSAY
You will devise your own research project, on a topic that grows out of or is relevant to course readings and discussions. You’ll complete the essay in a series of stages (mostly on your blog, as indicated on the course Calendar): Project proposal, annotated bibliography, annotated paragraphs, analysis of passages (both literary and critical), draft, revised essay, and final project. I will post guidelines for each of these stages of the assignment here on our course site when the time for completing them approaches. We will also discuss the guidelines in class.