Course Assignments

In course assignments, students will be scored based on their command of the course material as well as the critical thinking and writing skills they display.

This course involves four forms of assessment:

Weekly Quizzes (20%)

Each week (usually by Monday at 9am, but due dates are specified on the course calendar), students will be expected to complete a very brief reading quiz on Canvas, on the theoretical readings for the Module, the readings due on that day. These quizzes are multiple choice and timed, but you may re-take them for full credit.

Weekly Discussion Board Posts (20%)

For each module, there will be a discussion board where students are invited to engage a text, image, or contemporary topic through the lens of that module’s readings and theoretical framework. To receive full credit on these assignments, students must engage the prompt directly, and refer to the course readings clearly and specifically, demonstrating a strong, holistic understanding of the text (not simply a familiarity with the thesis).

Engagement (10%)

To receive an A in participation, students are expected to contribute substantively in every
class. It is adequate to contribute examples or to ask clarifying questions, but to receive an A, students must engage course topics specifically, by demonstrating a high order understanding of the material OR by asking questions that contribute to their peers' deeper understanding of the course.

** As evaluating participation is subjective in nature, I will send each student a midterm update letting students know what their participation grade is at the midterm mark.

Incremental Assignments Related to the Final Project (20%)

So that final project topics are threaded throughout the course, students will begin to develop the essay early, and develop it incrementally by meeting several deadlines prior to final submission. While most of the course covers the political history of the sociology of bodies, final projects will focus on a contemporary health initiative. My hope is that students can use this history to better articulate the meaning and influence of their contemporary initiative.

• Week 4: Students are required to select a text, image, or initiative that is situated in contemporary health culture, which they would like to analyze for their final project. (2 points)

• Week 5: Students are required to select an audience and a medium in which their essay will be published. For example, students could plan to produce an academic essay (a writing sample for graduate school applications, or a submission for a departmental or external undergraduate writing award), or a high level analytical essay for the popular press (an article for a magazine like The Atlantic, The Root, Bitch Magazine, or another political press). (3 points)

• Week 8: Students will submit a 1-page memo update on the progress they’ve made exploring their topic and situating it in the course. They should speak to the methodologies, theories, and political histories they plan to use, and identify barriers they’ve come across. (5 points)

• Week 11: Students will submit a first draft of the final paper. The draft should be complete, but can be in formation. It should be ready for peer review. (5 points)

• Week 12: Students will participate in 2 rounds of peer review, providing feedback on others’ projects, and implementing the recommendations of peers. (5 points)

• Week 13: Students will complete and submit their final project, and (ideally) submit it elsewhere!

Final Project (30%)

The course will culminate in an analytical essay and a week of final presentations. These essays will represent 30% of each student's final grade.

For this final assignment, each student will select a health initiative in contemporary American life (public or private, that is, either for or not-for profit) that is not discussed at length in the course. These initiatives can large or small in scale, so long as they relate to sex, food, or fitness. These topics could be as varied as “abstinence only sex education programming,” “keto dieting,” or “The Soulcycle Phenomenon.” But the student has to choose specific texts, images or other media for analysis; the student has to be able to access a website, press conference, manifesto, guidebook, or physical space, that is an access-point to this health initiative.

Each student will accomplish 3 goals:

1. Provide a short history of the initiative: its emergence, its demographic, its values

2. Interpret the initiative through the three course units by addressing the following questions:

   1.  How are bodies “known” by this initiative?

   2. How are bodies “valued” by this initiative?

   3.  How are bodies “regulated” by this initiative?

3. Using the theoretical approaches they’ve learned, present an educated, sociological interpretation of:

   1. The political history of similar initiatives

   2. What elements of the initiative’s social and historical context enabled and constrained its emergence (and disintegration, if appropriate)?

   3. What the initiative itself enables and constrains in the embodied experiences of Americans

Students will be expected to produce:

1. An analytical essay for a target audience

2. A brief presentation for the class (this element of the project should be simple, casual, and is Pass/Fail)

Extra Credit (+5%)

Students may receive up to 5 extra credit percentage points by maintaining weekly “field observations,” and recording these observations to the course field observations board. These can be news articles, advertisements, images and texts you come across, that are a part of contemporary American health culture.

To receive full credit, students must post 5 entries throughout the semester, the text itself and a brief 4-5 sentence caption explaining its connection to the class. This is the only extra credit assignment that will be provided. Students who are “close to” receiving a grade at the end of the semester will not be considered for a grade bump unless they have completed extra credit work.

The grading system is as follows:

A (4.00), A- (3.67) B+ (3.33), B (3.00) B- (2.67) C (2.00) F (.00)
All students can access final grades through Agora after the grading deadline each semester. Transcripts are available through the Office of Student Services.