I tend to think of the chief value of discussions in C&T as the process—the practice in thinking and speaking about what you have read and seen. But, along the way, discussions produce many valuable things—details of the material under discussion, insights into what it may mean, ideas that it suggests to people. You may find it useful to have a record of these things for a number of reasons, but the greatest value of such a record is probably as a source of material for your papers and as an aid in recalling the many different things we will have discussed by the time you reach the final exam.
For these reasons, I would encourage you to always take notes for your own purposes, but it can be hard to do that when you are actively involved in a discussion, and it can be especially hard to get down your own contributions. That’s why we will have a designated note-taker for each discussion. When you are playing that role, you should think what you would like to have on paper as a record of the discussion and work to provide that for the whole class.
People will make different judgments about what should be in the notes, and there are many different styles of note-taking. I encourage you to look over the notes others have taken as they become available for ideas about what you might do when you take notes, but here are a few suggestions to get you started.
• Get down references to passages (or events in films) that are mentioned at the beginning and during the course of the discussion (and don’t hesitate to break in to ask people for references if they didn’t give them or your weren’t able to get them down initially).
• Note interesting questions whether or not they are answered and even if they don’t lead to further discussion.
• Watch for ideas, distinctive perspectives on the material under discussion, and issues about which people disagree. In the latter case, try to sketch the arguments on both sides and don’t hesitate to ask people if they haven’t made their arguments clear to you.
I don’t expect you to record everything of these sorts that occurs in the course of a discussion, and you certainly should not attempt to transcribe the whole discussion. Aim for about a page or so of notes. While there is likely to be more that is worth recording, it may be hard to get down much more, and it will be hard for people to make use of more extensive notes, particularly when studying for the final.
I’ll ask you to type up your notes and send them to me as an e-mail attachment. I will process them and post them on the web site. There is no specific deadline, but I’ll start checking on them if I haven’t received something within a week after the class.