Grading, Attendance and Participation, Late Work and Plagiarism
The final grade is based on the papers (25% each) and attendance and participation (25%). Graduate students will give one oral presentation and write a standard seminar paper.
Please arrive at each week's discussion section having done the reading, prepared to ask questions and actively participate. Attendance will be taken at each section and factored in to your participation grade. Attendance is also taken at screenings, and I consider screenings and discussions equally in terms of attendance.
Late work will be marked down one notch (an A- becomes a B+) for the first week it is late; two notches for the second week. I may elect to accept late work after two weeks, but do not have to: in any case, work more than two weeks late will be given a maximum grade of 50% (still substantially better than nothing, however). You should always contact your instructor about late work or work not handed in, well in advance of the due date whenever possible, or as soon afterward as you can.
Plagiarism means “handing in work that you claim is your own original work when it is not.” Any student who hands in any work of any kind for this course that contains material written by someone else (usually taken from the internet, but not always) without citation (quotation marks, title of essays, etc.) will immediately receive a failing grade for the entire course. The professor may also recommend the student for expulsion from the university if the offense is judged especially severe.
Let me give a few examples, so we’re clear: if you hand in a paper in which a paragraph is copied from SparkNotes, you will fail the class. If you hand in a paper in which one sentence is copied from someone else’s personal web site, you will fail the class. If you hand in a paper in which a couple of unimportant sentences are copied from a web site or a essay you found in the library, you will fail the class. If you write every word of all your essays and are a model student all semester, but copy a couple of sentences on your very last paper or on the final, you will fail the class. If you missed the classes when I explained this policy and reminded students about it, and you didn’t know about the web site where I explain it, and you missed that part of freshman orientation where they explained what plagiarism is, you will still fail the class.
I have had to fail students for plagiarism on several occasions in this class, almost invariably for taking material from the Internet; don’t ruin your semester (and mine) in this way.
