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Course Requirements Students are required to keep up with the readings and be prepared for class discussion. Class attendance and participation will count as 20% of the grade. Students will be asked to prepare one short (10 double-spaced pages) book report and one final longer (20 double-spaced pages) paper to fulfill the requirements of this course. The reports will be written on one of the books discussed in class. The report will be due a week after the discussion of the book. The report should aim at a discussion of what the book is trying to explain, how the past is reconstructed in it and the success or failure to make a sociological argument. The report will count as 30% of the grade. The topic of the longer paper will be decided in consultation with the instructor and the TA. We will devote three to four classes to discussion of paper topics. You will have to be prepared to present your paper topic and your concerns for 10-15 minutes. The paper will be due December 10. This final paper will count as 50% of the grade. The following are possible frameworks for papers. --Students can choose a particular historical period or event of interest and discuss the histories of the period, exploring the ways in which the narratives were constructed, and how these narratives could be related to the more theoretical concerns that sociology has. This kind of exercise works really well when there are contradictory narratives of particular events; when historians do not agree and the reader has to adjudicate between versions. How do we go about this task? --Students can choose an historical account of a period or an event and identify the sociological variables, mechanisms and processes that are at work. They would then discuss the ways in which these mechanisms and processes are transportable to other contexts.
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