Discussion Leadership

Each of you will be asked to share the role of seminar leader for two classes this semester. Your job is to provoke discussion of the assigned text and starting points for the week, and to come up with enough ideas/topics to sustain discussion for an hour or so between you. You and your partner may decide to provoke that discussion in a number of ways (which may include starting by asking students to write for 5-10 minutes if you like).

Your responsibilities:

• Prepare the work thoroughly.
• Read the assigned material for the week carefully.
• Do any additional research you feel necessary to understand and present the writer & work's background and deal with its specific challenges.
• If you want to give us one additional critical article to read, please e-mail that article to us by Sunday evening so that people have a chance to read it before seminar. (Additional reading isn't required, but sometimes you find an article that's just so appropriate you want everybody to know it.)
• Come up with discussion questions, a list of provocative critical statements (as in the "Starting Points" papers), or ideas that will inspire good classroom discussion. Make sure that you design open-ended questions so that they foster discussion rather than funneling it quickly into a resolution, and that you have enough questions/quotes/ideas to keep the discussion going (not all questions work, so you may have to drop a few to get others going).
• Provide the class with a bibliography of interesting works relative to your topic; this should be submitted to Dr. K as an e-mail attachment in Word before the class meeting so that she can post it on the class web page for student reference.

Your performance as a seminar leader will constitute 1/3 of your class participation grade (therefore 10% of your overall grade in the class), so give it the attention such a significant element deserves. I'll be very happy to meet with the leaders in advance of the scheduled class to discuss your plans if you would like to do so.

Schedule: To be determined