Introduction to World Religions - Study Guide | HISTORY 112, Papers of Anthropology of religion

Download Introduction to World Religions - Study Guide | HISTORY 112 and more Papers Anthropology of religion in PDF only on Docsity! History 112, Fall 2003 Professor Ogilvie Handout #10 Paper #2 instructions The assignment Write an opinion essay for the editorial section of a newspaper (an op-ed essay) on some aspect of religion in contemporary life. Your op-ed essay should address an issue of contemporary concern—that is, current events or something underlying current events—from the framework of a knowledge of the history of religions. In this course, you have begun to develop expertise in the history and comparative study of religions. This assignment asks you to turn that knowledge to good use by explaining contemporary developments to those who know less than you do. Topics for your essay should emerge out of following the news over the next five weeks. The course website includes links to the PBS Religion and Ethics Newsweekly website and the BBC Religion website. You should also read a daily newspaper from time to time. Major papers like the New York Times and the Boston Globe usually include a religion column on Saturday or Sunday. You can also search Google News (news.google.com) for religious topics. However, do not use Google or another website to do your research at the last minute! This assignment requires depth of knowledge, depth that you can attain only by following a subject for several weeks and supplementing news reports with some library research to uncover the background. If you don’t regularly read op-ed columns, you should do so from time to time before writing your essay. The New York Times and Boston Globe editorial sections provide good models. Other important papers include the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. Weekly or monthly newsmagazines like the Nation, the New Republic, the National Review, or the Economist also provide good models, though their essays tend to be longer and more involved. The periodicals section in the DuBois Library is a good place to read papers and magazines. N.B.: An op-ed essay must be reasoned. It cannot simply be a rant full of assertions that have no facts to back them up. For that reason, we require footnotes, even though published op-ed essays don’t have footnotes. Even though I disagree with Thomas Friedman (who writes for the NY Times), he is a reasonable model. Rush Limbaugh is not. In other words, be judicious, not inflammatory. Generate light, not heat. This essay has several points. First, it requires you to link your historical knowledge of religion with what is going on in today’s world. Second, it asks you to explain your specialized knowledge to a general audience, which is a good way of finding out what you really know. Third, it helps you with the kind of writing you will have to do when you graduate and find a job. Fourth, it gives you the chance to pursue your own interests in a classroom assignment. I hope that you find it enjoyable as well as challenging. Due date and grading The paper is due at the beginning of lecture on Thursday, November 20. If you hand in your paper late, it will be marked down one letter grade for each working day it is late. Your paper will be graded according to whether it makes and supports an interesting argument about the topic. We expect that you will get the facts right, but minor factual errors will not result in your paper being marked down significantly. You must make a case for your conclusions, though; a paper that simply lists facts without explaining what they mean will not get a good grade. This is an op-ed essay: that is, it should support your opinion on a subject by offering facts that sustain what you think and making an argument on the basis of those facts. A paper that makes a strong argument based on facts will get a good grade even if we disagree with your conclusion. I expect that a B paper will show an adequate command of historical thinking and writing: that is, it will (1) use appropriate evidence in support of (2) a clear, coherent argument that (3) demonstrates a focused thesis. It will do so in (4) correct standard English, with correct spelling and