You will write three papers for this course. All three papers should adher to the following specifications.

Specifications for Writing 2 Papers:

• Make sure your paper has a descriptive title (not just "assignment 1"); a seperate title page is not necessary. On the first page, above the title (to help me with my clerical work be sure to include, your name, the name and the time of the course.
• All papers will be a minimum of 1200 words.
• Be sure to double space.
• Margins should be an inch to an inch and a half on all sides.
• All papers should appear in Times New Roman font, 12 point. This appears to be the standard font for colleges and universities across the country.
• Do not justify the right hand margin. Leave it ragged.
• All papers should have a descriptive title, one that gives some idea about what you are going to say.
• All papers will be submitted via email attachment. If you don't know how to attach files see me or ask one of your roommates.
• Make sure that your name is on the actual paper (in the file); also please indicate what class you are in (Writing 2 in this case) and the time of the class. These items help me with my secretarial chores.
• Since you will be submitting your papers as email attachments, you don't need to include headers or page numbers for that matter. I can just scroll down as I read.
• Do not double space between paragraphs. That is a convention of web writing, but not yet a convention for academic and other types of writing.
• Formatting Quotations (MLA style) or how correctly to stick quotations in your paper: click here. Also be sure always to "introduce" your quotation. For example:
  Karl Marx writes, "Blah, blah, blah." That first little bit (Karl Marx writes) is the introduction.

General Directions for all Papers:

As you know from Writing 1 I do not assign topics or give so-called "prompts" for papers. That means, as you have seen, that figuring out what you want to write about and what you want to say about what you want to write about becomes the central task of your writing. Of course, the class itself has a rather general huge topic: the Consumer Society; and within that the readings will push your writing in one direction or another. For example, the first readings for the quarter are intended to raise and address, at least partially, the question: what is the consumer society, or a bit more specifically, how for the purposes of this course will the consumer society be defined. The second set of readings address an issue slightly more specific and specific too the consumer society: the issues of advertising and celebrity worship. The third piece of material for the course is the film, "The Truman Show."

As you also already know from Writing 1, I don't expect your papers to "cover" all of the materials we have read, discussed, or viewed. I would much rather you engage in depth a single reading or even a single example (to make whatever point you want to make) than write up a cursory treatment of the readings. This is another way of saying that I hope you do not think of the writing as a form of test on whether you have or have not done the readings.

Class discussions will of course help you to define the thing you must want to say, but in large part what you want to say will arise from how you engage the material and how the material engages you. I hope the material engages you. After all, we live in a consumer society and on top of that at the moment we live in a consumer society in crisis. Looking at this society and at this crisis should affect us in personal ways. What do you think of the consumer society? Where is it going? What are its short comings? Where did it come from and how did it develop? What sort of ethic or morality does it tend to promote.

I certainly hope the material engages you because, ultimately, that "personal" or "subjective" engagement will fuel whatever you decide to write about. In this light, I do not expect you to be "objective" or "detached" from whatever you write about. I do of course hope that you are accurate in your treatment of the readings and fair in your assessments, but this is not the same thing as being objective. This is best described as "being reasonable."

I am interested then in how the materials affect you; what do they help you to see or make you feel.

Paper 1: Paper one will be based on the readings, inclass discussions and viewings for the first three weeks of the course. Paper one is currently scheduled to be done at the end of the fourth week.

Paper 2: Paper two will be based on the readings, inclass discussions and viewings for weeks five, six, and seven. Paper one is scheduled to be due at the end of the eight week (but these dates are subject to change).

Paper 3: Paper three will be a response to the film, The Truman Show, and inclass discussions and analysis during weeks eight, nine and ten.