Reading responses : https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/Aristotle-…

Reading responses : https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/Aristotle-…

In a maximum of 300 words, respond to one of the primary source readings following the criteria below. You may pick any primary source reading you’d like, provided that you write about it before we discuss it in class. This assignment has a rolling due date so that you have ample opportunities to pick whichever reading most interests you, but you must turn the first one in prior to the end of the day on September 29.

Reading responses are meant to give you the opportunity engage directly with the primary source readings and critically analyze them through a very short argumentative essay.

Reading responses should critically engage with the primary source material in order to analyze the ideas presented, to raise issues related to the themes of course, and to put the readings “in conversation” with one another in order to gain an understanding of the different interpretations of the historical sources and the time period in question. You should be able to answer basic questions through these responses that explain what you can learn from the historical time period in question based on the text alone.

These responses should not be mere summaries of the readings (though very brief summary may occasionally be necessary to make your argument). Typically, the best technique is to form the response around a question you have about the reading or to find a short, especially interesting passage from the reading (probably no more than a paragraph) and do a close, analytical reading of it. Think of yourself as having a conversation with the author in an attempt clarify ideas that may not make sense at first glance or pretend that you are attempting to convince a friend with whom you disagree about the merits of a particular authors’ ideas. Ideally, these responses will form the foundation of the questions we will explore in class discussion.

Please refer to some of the examples I’ve posted in the Modules section if you have any questions about what a model reading response looks like.

Some basic pieces of advice for writing reading responses and discussing readings in class:

1. Identify the author’s voice. Is the author and at least consider who the audience is or might be. In some cases, Hunt et al. will often discuss this briefly. Sometimes it will be obvious from the text. Is the author writing a treatise? Claiming to speak for a divine power, or relate its message? Offering advice? Responding to some particular person or idea? Making a speech? If so, to whom? Performing a poem? Stating rules for a society?
2. What does the author say? We can rarely or never look into the mind of the author, that is, read his thoughts. This is because he or she is dead. In any event, with the living, can we read their minds, or just listen to their words and observe their actions? Therefore, we can only try to look through the words on the page and try to say what the author means, describes, argues, etc.
3. Try to identify what the author presupposes. That is, what things does he take for granted, and what does he seem to have argue? This helps us distinguish—though it ma be hard to be sure—what the author thought was the status quo and how he was trying to change it, or what new modes and orders for the world he saw as coming. What was old, what might be new, at that past moment in time?
4. Once you have identified what you think the author’s opinion was, then you are in a position to say, carefully, what you think of that opinion. Does the author assume that slavery is a natural condition? Or argue that it should be? What do you think of that?
5. Every paper (even very short ones) that you write must have an argument. Typically, your argument is your own judgment about what the author meant or said. In these short reading responses, the answer should be your unique reading of a particular passage.

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