Reading Responses
Students are asked to complete two short reading response papers, which collectively account for 20% of the grade for the course. The response papers (1 single-spaced page each) should critically engage with readings from selected weeks of the student’s choosing, from week 3 through week 12, though one must be from the first part of the course and one from the second. They will be due by 11:59 PM on the Monday before class.
Final Paper (Research Proposal or Project)
The final paper (about 15–18 pages), which accounts for 50% of the grade for the course, can be written as a research proposal that critically assesses an area of interest to generate original research questions, propositions and testable hypotheses. This is intended to support first/second year papers, dissertation proposals, or chapters. Master’s students have the option of doing a final project to be decided upon in consultation with the instructor.
Topics of Selected Final Papers from Spring 2020:
- Hitting Them in the Stomach: Revisiting The Jungle during the Time of Coronavirus
- The Political Economy of New Mobility
- The (Un)Sustainable Prison Garden as a Project of Moralization by the Market
- The Problem of Freedom and Coercion under the Neoliberal State and the Radical Re-embedding of Markets in Mutual Aid Practices
- Health Code System: The Black Box Society Of China
- Neoliberalism and the Creation of a Racialized Surplus Population
- Negara Mawa Tata, Desa Mawa Cara: The State Has Order, The Village Has Custom
- Recombinant Institutions: Culture and Institutions in a Global Pandemic
- Fraternity as Business: Assets, Violence, and Whiteness
- Crisis and the New Deal State
