From the syllabus:
TERM PAPER. You will write one big term paper (8–12 pages) on a topic of your choice drawn from the topics discussed in class (or that would fit in this class).
There are three models you could follow for this term paper:
Topical paper. Pick a topic and a question within that topic—especially a social or ethical question—and do some research. Find articles and other resources on the topic, synthesize what you’ve read, draw a conclusion, and defend that conclusion from the evidence. This model is particularly good for topics not covered in the readings (and there are many).
Book report. Pick a book, read it carefully, and interact with the details of the author’s argu- ment. We’ll be reading exerpts from many books. If one particularly strikes your interest, then go read the rest of the book. Of course, you’ld have to read ahead to know if you’re interested in a reading we’ll do later in the semester.
Close reading. Pick an article or paper (could be one we read for class, but not necessarily—I’ll provide a list of unassigned but interesting papers) and dissect it exhaustively. The hard work of this is getting the sources the author cites and judging whether the author has used them fairly. My paper “A Christian Analysis of Gabriel’s ‘Mob Software’ ” is an example of this model. I use the pattern of context (what did the author’s sources actually say?), content (what did the author say?), and critique (was the author right?).
Your work on the paper will be structured into a proposal, an outline, a draft, and a final version.
The due dates for the checkpoints will be