Seminar meetings: Tuesdays 7:30 - 9:00 in Cupples I 207
Instructor: Joel Anderson Office: Busch Hall 225E Phone: 935-7147
    E-mail: anderson@artsci.wustl.edu Office hours: Thursdays, 2-3:30

Dates and Assignments

Texts for the course:

Required:

• Wayne Booth, Gregory Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams, The Craft of Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995)
• Audi, Robert (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (2^nd edition), CUP, 1999.

• Joseph M. Williams, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 6^th ed (New York: Longman, 2000)

 

We will be using the Prometheus courseware for sharing files and assignments. To access this site, you first need to create a user account: Go to http://courses.artsci.wustl.edu and click on "Create New Student Account" (if you don't already have one from another course). Create your own login and password; click "Add Course", which will prompt you for the course ID (2459) and the password ("integrative").

How the Sessions Will Be Run

1. Discussion with members of the Philosophy Department, who will outline their current research interests, situate their work within the field as a whole, and explain how they approach writing a book or article. So that you have some background for these sessions, you are expected to read the assigned entries in the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy.
2. Workshops on the skills involved in doing philosophical research: sometimes with the assistance of visitors, we will discuss important components of the research process:

1. Moving from just having a topic to identifying and refining a research problem
2. Finding, using, and citing sources, including formatting a bibliography properly
3. Revising and editing essays for clarity (and to fit stylistic conventions of a scholarly journal).
4. Designing and delivering an effective oral presentation.

1. Attendance and active, informed participation: Especially since there will be only 12 meetings, it is crucial that you attend all seminar meetings and come prepared to engage the speakers and topics that are the focus of the seminar discussions. Attendance will be taken.
MAKE-UP POLICY: If you miss a class for any reason, the make-up is to attend a lecture in the department's Colloquium Series and to write a one-page summary of the talk and the subsequent question-and-answer. (These are typically Thursdays, from 4:15-6; all are welcome.) Information about talks is available on the departmental web site or from Mindy Danner.

1. Assigned readings: These will be from the Cambridge Companion to Philosophy and The Craft of Research. This should never take more than an hour or two for any given week.

1. Revision Project: This is the main assignment, due on November 5. I have broken the assignment into several smaller sub-projects. Although it might seem as if there are a lot of these components, several will be done in class, and the structure of this series of projects is designed to make it easier to come up with the completed project on time. [Note:  If you are planning to write an Honors Thesis next year and  already have a good idea of the claim you wish to defend, you can speak to me about doing a project along those lines.] For the Revision Project, you will need to revise a short (3-7 page) paper that was written for a previous class in light of the comments you got in that class and feedback from members of your writing circle. There are several distinct assignments associated with this project:
1. Statement of the research problem you are addressing in your essay.
2. Revised introduction (in the "Context + Problem + Main Point" format), as well as in-class comments on the revised introductions of the other members of your writing circle.
3. Draft revision of the original paper, as well as in-class comments on drafts of at least two members of your writing circle.
4. Library research exercises, designed to expand your familiarity with the area of your essay.
5. An annotated partial bibliography for the paper (at least 5 items, with a sentence for each)
6. A final revised paper, formatted for submission to a philosophical journal, with a "Revision Report" (1-2 pages), outlining the weaknesses of the initial essay and how your improved it.
 
2. Presentations: Develop a short (five-minute, 750-word) presentation of your revised paper or thesis proposal, to be given in one of the last two seminar meetings of the semester. The aim is to have something approximating a philosophy symposium. Faculty will be invited. In your presentation, you should state one or two key claims you are making, the research problem you are aiming to solve, and how your research problem fits into current debates. With regard to the latter, you should identify the alternatives to your position or approach and give your reasons for taking your approach rather than any of the alternatives.