Requirements
How your grade is calculated
Attendance & participation 10% Eight analytic briefs 40% Three collaborative memos 30% Term paper 20%
Attendance & participation
With Cities After Society, I hope to provide you an exciting experience in advanced-level scholarship, collaborative writing, and student initiative in the classroom. I anticipate that some of the readings and arguments you encounter may be challenging to grasp fully, but my hope is that this course will help you develop a confidence and method for processing difficult materials that will serve you long after the semester ends. Accordingly, the seminar's success depends heavily on your preparation for and participation in class.
Attendance is mandatory, and missing more than one class without excuse will impair your final grade. For each date listed on the schedule, you are expected by classtime to have finished the assigned readings; you should also have in mind some questions and/or issues for discussion in class. Participation also includes the occasional in-class presentation, discussion agenda, or reading selection that I ask you to prepare.
Weekly briefs
For 8 weeks' reading assignments of your choice, you will write an analytic brief of minimum 500-word length. Here, you should strive to elaborate, critique, synthesize, or apply the ideas that you have found most important or provocative. There is no need to cover the entire argument of each reading or, when there is more than one assigned, every reading. Choice of format is up to you: a theoretical discussion, an application of the readings to a real-life example, etc. Briefs are to be posted on the Moodle discussion board by the appropriate deadline (see below); do not bring hard copies to class.
You will write two kinds of briefs: (a) 4 written before class, and (b) 4 written after class.
Briefs written before class will focus explicitly on the reading(s) assigned for that week. Do not simply summarize or compare two readings, but try to develop an analysis and questions that we can pursue further in class. Questions for basic clarification (e.g., "What did the author mean by...?") are appropriate here but should not take up the whole brief. Before-class briefs are due by midnight on Monday nights, so that your fellow students have time to read them before class.
Briefs written after class will address the readings and classroom discussions held in class. They should demonstrate a more knowledgeable and sophisticated understanding of the materials, after you have resolved questions about the readings and had time to mull the ideas over. Reflections on the juxtaposition and direction of the course readings (e.g., "Over the last few weeks, we seem to have heard different views on...") are welcome. After-class briefs are due within 24 hours after each class meeting.
Three collaborative memos
On three different due-dates, students will be assigned a theoretical essay question that they will answer collectively. The writing you collaborate on need not present a seamless, singular argument, but it should demonstrate a good amount of intellectual exchange and mutual teaching among each other outside of class. It is up to you how to approach your collaboration: write different sections of a shared argument, offer competing perspectives on an issue, respond to fellow students' writings with further elaboration or theoretical contextualization, etc. It is also up to you how to divide the labor on this assignment; students will share the same grade assigned to each memo. Memos will be written on the Moodle wiki forum, and each should be a minimum of 2500 words.
Term paper
On Monday, December 14 (the first day of exam period), you will turn in a 12-page term paper that addresses the theoretical challenges posed by the "cities after society" theses through an original analysis.
The first part of your paper should be devoted to the description and analysis of an original topic: a case study, empirical trend, scholarly development, or intellectual debate of your choice. For this section you may conduct new research or draw on previous research you have done elsewhere (for instance, your senior thesis). In either case, the task here to frame and develop the topic so that it is an effective foil for the next section.
The last part of your paper should draw from but move beyond your topic to conclude with an original argument about the ideas we have encountered in this seminar. Elaborate the theoretical implications of your topic for the "cities after society" theses; propose new directions and new questions for urban studies that continue the intellectual agenda introduced in our seminar; or complicate or (now is your chance, if you are so inclined) reject altogether the "cities after society" theses through a defense of urban studies' society-centric traditions.
Your term paper will be evaluted based on how effectively and insightfully you develop your topic, and on how well you articulate the theoretical challenge of the "cities after society" theses for urban studies. Citations and bibliography are required.