The course will try specifically to organize your efforts around developing tangible professional skills, particularly the production of  a publishable professional article.  To facilitate these ends, within the first two or three weeks of the course each of you (with assistance from me) will choose a clearly defined and manageable project with the specific idea of turning the results into a legitimate journal article on a particular work or aspect of a figure’s work.

During the term you will be responsible for, and your grade will be based on, the following specific work:

(1) assembling and working through an appropriate bibliography relevant to the chosen project;
 

(2) submitting and discussing with me a skeletal rough draft of the resulting term paper;
 

(3) producing the final 10- to 25-page term paper;
 

(4) submitting, separate from the term project, weekly reading-notes/critiques of the assigned reading that week.
 

(5) for one or possibly two weeks (which you choose well ahead of time), organizing several of the main points from your reading notes into a three- to four-page (1000-word maximum) class presentation (distributed to the class at least one day before that week's seminar), which will form the basis for initiating the discussion of that week's reading.
 

Categories 1, 2, and 3 above will together count toward approximately 50% of your grade (with the final term paper comprising by far the most important element).

Categories 4 and 5—most particularly the weekly preparation for and participation in class sessions—will together count toward the remaining approximately 50% of your evaluation and grade.