Keep working on syllabus. Most of the working parts, now.

syllabus.md

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
 ### Administrativia
 * _Instructor_: Scott Richmond, Associate Professor Cinema and Digital Media
 * _Meets_: Wednesdays, 3-7pm, in Innis 223E
-* _Office hours_: Tuesdays, 2-4pm; you must sign up at https://calendly.com/s-richmond/officehours
+* _Office hours_: Tuesdays, 1-4pm; you must sign up at https://calendly.com/s-richmond/officehours
 
 ### Course details
 #### Catalog description
@@ -16,12 +16,15 @@ My goals for you for this semester are: (1) to get a solid grounding in how to r
 #### Assignments & marking
 There are two papers for the course. A midterm paper due on March 1 (5-7pp.), and a final paper on April 30 (18-20pp.).
 
-**Midterm paper.** Worth 30% of your final mark. The midterm paper will involve close engagement with one of the essays from Kyle Stevens, _The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory_. This will involve an analytical summary and theoretical critique of this essay. Students will all work on different essays.
+**Midterm paper.** Worth 25% of your final mark. The midterm paper will involve close engagement with one of the essays from Kyle Stevens, _The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory_. This will involve an analytical summary and theoretical critique of this essay. Students will all work on different essays.
-**Final paper.** Worth 50% of your final mark. The final paper will be an act of theorizing of your own. This will be guided (if not quite scaffolded) over the second half of the course.
+**Final paper.** Worth 50% of your final mark. The final paper will be an act of theorizing of your own. This will be guided (if not quite scaffolded) over the second half of the course. The midterm paper should be a starting point for this.
 
-**Good citizenship.** Worth 20% 0f your final mark. Good citizenship involves things both countable and uncountable. The countable parts will be assessed using a chit system; the uncountable parts will be assessed holistically. Here's the breakdown:
+**Good citizenship.** Worth 25% 0f your final mark. Good citizenship involves things both countable and uncountable. The countable parts will be assessed using a chit system; the uncountable parts will be assessed holistically. Each is worth a third of the "good citizenship" mark total. Here's the breakdown:
-* _Guiding the conversation._ Once during the semester, students will be required (with a partner) to pose the questions to which will will address ourselves during the seminar portion of the course. You must do this, but there is no evaluative component. Worth 10% of your final mark. You get full marks if you do the thing.
+* _Guiding the conversation._ Once during the semester, students will be required (with a partner) to pose the questions to which will will address ourselves during the seminar portion of the course. You must do this, but there is no evaluative component. You get full marks if you do the thing.
-* _Showing up to the seminar._ This is fuzzy. Are you on time? Do you contribute to the discussion? Have you done the reading? Are you supportive of your fellow students? Worth 10% of your final mark, assessed holistically.
+* _Showing up to the seminar._ This is fuzzy. Are you on time? Do you contribute to the discussion? Have you done the reading? Are you supportive of your fellow students? Assessed holistically.
+* _Taking minutes._ Twice during the semester, you will be responsible for taking the minutes of the class. Most weeks, that means there will be two people taking minutes. Those two (or three) people will harmonize their notes into a quasi-official record of our seminar proceedings. There is no evaluative component. You get full marks if you do the thing twice; half marks if you do it once; zero marks if you don't do it at all.
+
+**Submitting work.** All work will be turned into the entire class: we are writing for one another. This means that when you write, e.g., your midterm paper, you are working on it for a concrete audience: _the other people in this seminar_. Use that knowledge as you write.
 
 #### Course patterns
 We have four hours together, in a single block, every week. Here's how you can expect us to spend our time together on days when there isn't a visitor. That's not our first day. That's also not our writing workshop.
@@ -40,13 +43,11 @@ We have four hours together, in a single block, every week. Here's how you can e
 #### Reading
 This is a reading-heavy and reading-forward course. The attachment here is to the site of theory. I know it's a lot; you need to get through it. That doesn't mean you need to read every word carefully! Part of the explicit project here will be to relinquish an attachment to mastery. That often means burning out the anxiety about understanding every word. I'm here to help you get it right, but I'm more concerned with your finding sincere & authentically productive ways to engage.
 
-### Course policies
-
-
 ### Course schedule
 #### Week 1: Introductions 
 -> 2024-01-10
 * No guides.
+* We will discuss this, and other, course documents.
 * Scott Richmond, "On the Impersonality of Experience," from _The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory_
 * Roland Barthes, "The Third Meaning," from _Image, Music, Text_
 * Stanley Cavell, "Music Discomposed," from _Must We Mean What We Say?_
@@ -122,5 +123,36 @@ This is a reading-heavy and reading-forward course. The attachment here is to th
 * Damon Young, "Ironies of Web 2.0," _Post45_ 2 (2019)
 * Zoom visit from Damon Young (University of California, Berkeley)
 
+#### WIP standups/workshop: date TBD, sometime between April 3 and 26.
+
 #### Final paper due: April 26, 2024, by 11:59pm
 
+### Course policies
+#### Addressing Scott
+I prefer that you call me Scott. If you must inscribe our hierarchical relation, I prefer Professor Richmond. I will deliver a dad joke (well, a gay uncle joke) by calling you "Student" if you call me "Professor."
+
+#### Late work
+I do not believe in penalty or punishment in the classroom. No late penalties. That said, I'll accept a late midterm paper up to 10 days late, no questions asked. If you're in the weeds, talk to me about it, and we'll figure out what can work for you. After 10 days, however, we'll have to have a meeting talking about how you got yourself into the kind of hot water where you're flubbing deadlines that hard. You'll have some work to do on yourself.
+
+The deadline for the final paper is a hard stop, for real. I will accept final papers until 11:59pm on April 26, after which I will no longer accept papers. You should plan on having the paper done well in advance, with plenty of time to revise. I mean this: if you don't have a complete working draft of a paper by April 19, you are in hot water.
+
+#### Comments on work
+I will have your midterm paper returned to you, with fulsome comments, within two weeks of when you submit it. If you give me the paper after April 1, I will mark but not comment on it.
+
+Comments on your final paper will take the form of a conversation between you and me. I will start with the question, "What do you want to learn from me about your work?" You should have an answer to that before we have our meeting.These meetings will take place in early May (hence the hard deadline for the final paper.)
+
+#### In case of a strike
+I take it that a strike will not _directly_ affect us in this class, since you are here in your capacities as a student. That said, we can discuss this. I am here in solidarity for you, and I'd like to know what solidarity can look like, meaningfully, for y'all.
+
+That said, I do suspect that a strike may _indirectly_ affect us: you'll be distracted, and possibly distraught. Not great conditions for learning. We'll feel our way through this, and I'd like to know what I can do to help.
+
+#### Academic misconduct and plagiarism
+School of Graduate Studies policies on academic misconduct and plagiarism are in full effect. These can be found at https://www.sgs.utoronto.ca/policies-guidelines/academic-integrity-resources/. This is deadly serious stuff for graduate students; I am a deep stickler for academic integrity. If you have questions or even hesitations about what is permissible, please ask early and often. Also, if it comes down to giving me something plagiarized or flubbing a deadline, flub the deadline (the late work policy above notwithstanding).
+
+I have taken no provisions to mitigate academic dishonesty from ChatGPT. I trust you, and I _actively want to know what you think_. That said, it does not quite go without saying: please do not use LLMs in an academically dishonest manner. That means: do not represent its output as your own thoughts, insights, or writing. (Seriously: do not take your thought so unseriously as to suggest, even to yourself, that it can be replaced by fancy autocomplete.)
+
+#### Contact
+I am more or less drowning in work, and email specifically. I cannot guarantee a response to email or Slack DMs in a particular window of time; I will do my best to respond within two business days. That said, especially if it's a time sensitive matter, I encourage you to send a follow-up email if I haven't gotten back to you within a week (or less, if the time-sensitive matter is getting ripe). I will _thank_ you for this sort of reminder; it is not remotely an imposition. Also, you may do better to make an appointment with me in office hours: you can be certain of my attention then.
+
+#### Accessibility
+I aim for universal accessibility in my course design, but this is not always possbile. If you have any concerns about accessibility issues (documented or undocumented, of whatever kind), please confer with me early and often about them. We will work together collaboratively to address your concerns.