POLICIES FOR E256 LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM
CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY, FALL 2012

EMAIL | SYLLABUS | POLICIES | QUESTIONS | PRESENTATIONS | JOURNALS | PAPER | FINAL

Attendance. Students should attend regularly. Missing an inordinate number of meetings (i.e. more than 20%) may become a factor in the final grade. Students are responsible for keeping up with missed sessions by listening to the audio files that become available within a few days of each session.

Incompletes. Incompletes are designed to help those who have completed most of their work but who are unable (due to circumstances beyond their control such as accident or serious illness) to complete the course requirements on time. Incompletes are not intended to help those who haven’t been able to keep up with the course workload, and I will not grant an incomplete in such cases.

“FW” (Failure to Withdraw). “Course withdrawal: Students who officially withdraw from a course between the third and the tenth week of a regular term (see academic calendar for interterm and summer deadlines) will receive a ‘W’ on their transcripts indicating the withdrawal. Students cannot drop a course after the tenth week of a regular semester (see academic calendar for interterm and summer deadlines). It is the student’s responsibility to officially withdraw from a course or all courses. Failure to attend a course does not constitute a withdrawal. Students who stop attending courses without officially withdrawing will receive a grade of “FW” (failure to withdraw) which is calculated as an ‘F’ grade.” At some schools, such a grade can have repercussions for a student’s financial aid and academic status, so if you decide to drop the course, please avoid an “FW” by dropping the course before the deadline passes. Don’t take the final exam if you have attended few class sessions and have no intention of turning in journals or the term paper: taking the exam commits you to a letter grade.

Plagiarism and Academic Dishonesty. Plagiarism consists in using other people’s specific language or paraphrased ideas without attribution. Plagiarism in essays and cheating on tests will result in an “F” for the course — not only for the assignment in question. Dishonesty in journal sets (copying other students’ work, plagiarizing or relying almost entirely on Internet material, pasting the same response repeatedly, etc.) will result in an “F” for that journal set. In severe or repeated cases, plagiarism can lead to suspension or even expulsion, as Chapman’s Undergraduate Catalog suggests. Many less serious problems stem from lack of experience in consulting and incorporating sources. Even honest failure to handle sources appropriately can affect grades because it reduces the scholarly effectiveness of one’s work. There’s nothing wrong with consulting online notes, so long as you only mean to gain quick familiarity with a text’s basic features and critical history and do not avoid making your own interpretation of the primary text. But you must always document your sources, whether you are paraphrasing them or quoting directly.

Chapman U Academic Integrity Statement. “Chapman University is a community of scholars that emphasizes the mutual responsibility of all members to seek knowledge honestly and in good faith. Students are responsible for doing their own work, and academic dishonesty of any kind will be subject to sanction by the instructor and referral to the university’s Academic Integrity Committee, which may impose additional sanctions up to and including dismissal. See the Undergraduate Catalog for the full policy.”

Source Work. It is acceptable to consult legitimate sources (scholarly articles, books, excellent web sites) while developing your paper, and if you are a graduate student you should engage with secondary material. But the most important thing if you are an undergraduate is to study your primary texts patiently. Commercial notes (even good ones) may hinder this process: they may give you an accurate sense of what is usually said about a given work, but what is “usually said” is for that very reason not interesting and shouldn’t replace your own insights. Other people’s ideas are valuable only if you make them your own honestly — a task that is part of genuine education. Check your school library’s online portal for article databases. Project Muse and JSTOR are among the best for humanities work. They not only list scholarly essays but, most often, allow you to download them as HTML or PDF files.