Course Meeting Times
Lectures: 1 session / week, 2 hours / session
Recitations: 1 session / week, 1 hour / session
Requirements
The following are required of all students:
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Class participation: Students must attend weekly class meetings, be prepared to discuss all the required readings (approximately 100 pages per week), and actively participate in class discussions. Please note that we take the class participation component of this course seriously. If you must miss a class, you must notify the instructors in advance. More than one unexcused absence will obviously jeopardize your class participation grade. Also, you must notify us at the beginning of the class if, for whatever reason, you are unprepared to participate in class discussion that day.
Again, more than one unexcused "unprepared" will jeopardize your class participation grade.
In addition to the regular class meetings, students will meet one hour per week for a recitation with the teaching assistant. Participation in recitation is essential, and will be counted toward your overall participation grade.
Current events articles.
Class debates (Class 4 and Class 10).
3 short (7 page) writing assignments.
A three-hour, closed-book, comprehensive final exam.
A map test at the beginning of the course.
Grading
Grades will be determined as follows: map test (5%); writing assignments (45%); final exam (20%); class participation and class debates (30%).
Plagiarism Clause
When writing a paper (or an essay exam), you must identify the nature and extent of your intellectual indebtedness to the authors whom you have read or to anyone else from whom you have gotten ideas (e.g., classmates, invited lectures, etc.). You can do so through footnotes, bibliography, or some other kind of scholarly apparatus. Failure to disclose your reliance on the research or thinking of others is PLAGIARISM, which is considered to be the most serious academic offense and will be treated as such. If you have any questions about how you should document the sources of your ideas, please ask your instructors before you submit your written work. You may also wish to consult Gordon Harvey's Writing with Sources (Hackett, 1998), which will be placed on reserve with the rest of the course readings.
MIT's academic honesty policy can be found at the Policies and Procedures website.
Important Dates
- Map test: Class 2
- First Paper: due three days after Class 4
- Second Paper: due five days after Class 7
- Third Paper: due three days after Class 12
- Final Exam