The final paper allows you to explore themes & issues of particular interest to you based on your work earlier in the term, in connection with some new source not assigned for our discussions.

Your Task: Select two related sources--one of the course texts plus one other--which should ideally be linked to themes or issues explored previously in one of your previous written contributions; and explore their relationship to one another and to the wider themes of the course.

Although this exploration need not be structured in the same way as the reading analyses, it should include at some point each of the three elements included in those analyses: (1) representing accurately and precisely the relevant claim(s) and statements of your chosen sources, situating the specific statements of those texts clearly within each work as a whole; (2) giving your own assessment of your chosen sources & reflecting explicitly on the perspective taken by each author, as distinct from your representation of those sources; and finally (3) discussing the significance of those sources for understanding the roles and relationships that women and men adopt and adapt in the context of their religious lives. You are free to be creative in combining these elements, though the same general proportions apply: representation of source(s) should take up roughly half of what you write, and be clearly distinguishable from assessment and reflection. 

In the last few weeks of the course I will ask you to submit a strategic plan setting forth:

(i) a brief overview of the sources you have chosen, and what attracted you to them;

(ii) a clear and concise statement of the primary claim(s) that you propose to emphasize--either your own or those of your chosen text(s)—followed by a brief description of how you will proceed to illustrate that claim (or those claims);

(iii)-(v) presentation of two or three sets of specific statements from your source(s), each set illustrating your chosen claim(s) in a different way; and finally

(vi) a brief reflection on the overall limitations and difficulties you think you may face in writing the paper: possible opposing claims; your own unstated presuppositions about your topic; related questions and issues that are outside the scope of your paper; and issues or questions that remain difficult to address.  (Address at least three of these.)

This strategic plan will serve as the basis for a one-on-one conference in which you and I review the proposed elements of the paper and discuss its viability.  The plan will not itself be graded; but its full completion is required and will be taken into account in evaluating the final paper.

Reminders about length: 2500-3500 words, or 10-14 pages with most fonts and margins; deadline: by noon on December 17th; and medium: stapled or paper-clipped and submitted with a self-addressed envelope (either campus mail or with the required US mail postage affixed).  NOTE: I will not read the paper and submit your grade until I receive an envelope with which to return it, since I don’t believe in commenting even minimally on work that won’t be returned.  The same late policy and style/format requirements articulated for the reading analyses apply also for the synopsis (though in this case 1/2 grade = 2 points foreach week a paper is submitted late).