CAS 105:

Instructor: Dan Mittag
Office: Lattimore 529
Telephone: 275-8110
Email: dlmt@mail.rochester.edu
Office Hours: Tues. 12-1:30 and by appointment
Course Webpage: http://mail.rochester.edu/~dlmt/courses/CAS105.html

Course Description

This course is designed to introduce you to analytical and critical writing, forms of writing which you will be expected to be able to produce at the University level. As the title of this course suggests, this introduction to university-level writing will be accomplished by focusing on various topics in the general field of social and political philosophy. We will spend time critically reading articles in order to try to understand both how the author uses argument and evidence in an effort to establish her thesis and how these articles work as a whole. As a result, we will carefully look at the variety and forms of argumentation, and we also will practice locating, extracting and analyzing the arguments presented in these articles.

Throughout this course, the emphasis will be on your own writing. You will be writing to explore, to understand, and to evaluate the readings we will discuss in class. The assignments and general structure of the course are intended to both facilitate your comprehension of the material and to help you become clear, careful academic writers. Further, since revision is a substantial and vital part of the writing process, you will be asked to write a series of critical papers of varying lengths, and these papers and the ideas presented in them will be under constant revision.

Objectives

• To come to better understand the topic, the role, and the importance of social and political philosophy.
• To understand the structure of, and to critically assess, academic texts.
• To identify, extract, and analyze arguments in different texts.
• To develop theses and construct arguments.
• To develop effective revision strategies.
• To use and correctly document sources.
• To produce clear academic prose which sustains an original argument in a library-researched paper.
• To think and write more carefully, clearly, and to the point.

Texts

• Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
• Second Treatise of Government, John Locke
• A Pocket Style Manual (2nd Ed.), Diana Hacker.
• Course Packet, under my name and gold (or yellow) in color.
• Selected articles on reserve in Rush Rhees Library.

Policies

All assignments must be finished and turned in on time. Late assignments will be marked down 1/3 of a grade for each day (not class session) that they are late.

Attendance: For this course, it is imperative that you come to class regularly and that you come to class prepared to be engaged actively with the material. As a result, I do require that you come to class, and I will be keeping track of who is missing each day. Repeated or excessive absences will result in your grade being lowered.

Participation: Participation will be a significant part of this course. Participation includes coming to class prepared and ready to discuss the day's material, contributing to class discussions, sharing your opinions in small group discussions, and workshopping with your peers. This means that you must have read the assigned material and spent some time sorting through, and trying to better understand, the material before you come to class.

Plagiarism: When you use another person's work or idea, you must properly document that you have done so. Lack of documentation or improper documentation are forms of plagiarism, and no form of plagiarism will be tolerated in this class. We will talk more in class about how to document your sources properly. If you are caught plagiarizing on an assignment in this class you automatically will fail that assignment.

Rewrites: For this course you are allowed to hand in an additional rewrite for two of the papers (i.e., each of the first two critical papers). You will be limited to one rewrite per assignment, and in order to increase your grade you must have done some substantial revision. In order to encourage this, I am also requiring that you set up an appointment with me to discuss the revision prior to your handing it in. Again, this is required in order to increase your grade on the assignment which you are revising. In this meeting we will discuss your ideas for revision, additional revision strategies, target some areas of the paper which could be improved, etc. If you have any other questions about this, please talk to me.

Evaluation and grades

Important Free Help

College Writing Center: The CWC, located in Rush Rhees G-121 (in the CLARC tunnel), offers free writing tutoring. They will not proofread your essay, but they will help you with general questions regarding content, style, etc. Call 273-3577 and make an appointment, and call early because appointments fill quickly. This is an extremely valuable resource; so please take advantage of it!

Also, I should emphasize that I encourage you to contact me if you have any questions. If you have any concerns about the course or you would like to discuss your work, feel free to contact me or to stop by my office during office hours.

Schedule

Texts:
STG = Second Treatise of Government, John Locke
CM = Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx
CP = Course Packet
PSM = Pocket Manual of Style, Diana Hacker
R = Article on Reserve
  To access reserve articles: Follow link, click on "local catalog", then click the "course reserve" tab, then search "Mittag" as instructor.

Please note: Readings listed on the syllabus are to be read for that day's class session.