Although I may occasionally assign specific topics for these weekly essays, I will generally leave the topics open to your choice. When I don’t make a specific assignment for a given week, you should choose a passage from any of the reading assigned for the week, give a brief summary of its contents, and then comment on it in a way that reflects your own thinking about it. A paragraph or two is a natural length for the passage you write about but it might range from a single sentence to a page.

The reading guides will sometimes point you to key passages in the reading assignments, but you needn’t limit yourself to these. You may take the assignment instead as a opportunity to speak to a part of the assigned reading that interests you but that might not end up being discussed in class.

Although even brief passages can provide enough material for lengthy discussions, I’m not asking for that in these assignments. Aim for something between a paragraph and a page in length (so roughly 100 to 300 words) divided more or less equally between your summary of the passage and your comment on it.

I will be happy to accept these on paper but I encourage you to submit them as e-mail messages (my address is helmang@wabash.edu). If you do, I’ll reply in the same way and you’ll generally get a faster response. My responses may occasionally offer corrections or other evaluations, but they will more often simply respond in the way I might in class discussion.

I won’t grade these assignments, but I keep a record of your completion of them as part of my evaluation of your class participation. You should turn them in week by week. I’ll set midnight each class day (i.e., Tues. or Thurs.) as the default deadline for assignments written on a passage from the reading for that day—you choose which days reading to write on—and I’ll accept them after that only by pre-arrangement or upon being offered a good reason or a dean’s excuse.