HONR 202H: Language and Gender
Fall 2002—Dr. Koster
Talking Papers

The assignments I call "talking papers" are meant to allow you to reflect on your reading, to bring to bear your knowledge from other subject areas, and to investigate carefully your own perceptions, biases, and responses to these complex topics. They are not research papers although you may feel free to refer (properly) to other people’s work when you present them.

A good "talking paper" presents your own response to what we are reading and doing in class, and should be offered to us before the general discussion of a point. Therefore, talking papers should be e-mailed to the class discussion list (HONR202H001@class.winthrop.edu) no later than midnight Sunday night so that people can read them before class and be prepared to talk about them.

Talking papers are usually very informal in style. They should be about 500 words (2 double-spaced typed pages long) and should show some evidence of editing, spell-checking, etc.—in other words, don’t just give us a brain dump but shape your response for effectiveness.

You must turn in five talking papers during the semester, but it is your choice of which of the eleven opportunities you respond to. (It is also your responsibility to keep count; if we get to the last two opportunities and you’ve only turned in two previous talking papers, you will have a maximum of four, and lose five possible points from your final grade.) You may turn in up to two additional talking papers for extra credit or to substitute for a lower grade; please indicate when you turn the paper in which option you want.

Formatting: Please attach your talking papers as a file to e-mail messages you send to the class discussion list. When you save the file to disk, under "Save as Type" choose Rich Text Format (*.rtf). This format is readable in most e-mail programs and should give us the least problem with Works vs Word vs WordPerfect vs AOL vs Godzilla technical problems.