Your grade in this class will be based on the following:
€Class Participation (20%)
€Journal Entries (20%)
€Interview Project (30%)
€Ethical Case Study (30%)

Class Participation (20%): About 30-40% of class time each week will be spent in small group work; the rest is usually going to be spent in active (I hope) discussion. This might start with someone saying: "Hey, I really liked/hated/cried about/lau ghed at what this author says about death/dying/living/caregiving, because it really reminded me of what my interview subject said/of my grandmother's death/of this week's episode of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer." Or maybe you found a quote from the readings (or somewhere else) and you want to put it on the board as you walk in for us to talk about. Not everyone needs to talk every time, but loud snoring will not be treated as a useful contribution.
Working groups: You will be assigned to a working group of 3-4 people for the duration of the semester. These groups will meet for some time each week during class. The primary function of these groups is to assist each other in the writing and rev ising process. You will share drafts of your papers with your group and will offer help, critique, suggestions, etc., to the other members. You may even decide to do one or more of the papers as a collaborative effort. Active participation in a working gr oup will count toward your class participation grade (and how you work in these groups will impact your paper grades).

Weekly Journal (20%): I'd like to begin each class with a few minutes of in class journaling on a question or issue raised by the readings or class discussion. (As the semester progresses, I invite you to propose topics and questions for journaling. After all, you're bound to get bored with my suggestions, once you figure out how my mind works.)

After we leave class, I'd like you to spend at least 1/2 hour per entry expanding, responding to, rewriting, or in some way continuing your journal entry for that week. Maybe something struck you in class discussion that made you change your mind about wh at you wrote. Maybe you want to further explain an idea. Maybe this journal entry could be turned into a poem or short story. Use your imagination. It doesn't have to be long or elaborate. If you only get 1/2 page of additional writing, fine. These are on -going conversations with yourself; they do not need to be formal or polished.

Beginning about the fifth class or so, I will ask you to choose one of your expanded journal entries (or poetry or short story or rant, whatever) to be shared with your classmates by posting it to our web site. (If possible, give me the entry on a computer disk to make it easier to post.) You get to choose which one you post, but by the end of the semester, everyone will have posted once. If you want, you can get the members of your working group to help you decide on one and help proofread it, if necessary. But even here, they do not need to be formal pieces of writing.

If you want to use these journals to start off that class discussion, that's great but not required. Doing them is required, however. I will collect journal entries toward the end of the term. Although the individual journal entries will not be graded, f ailure to do them will affect your grade.

Journal Due Date: 7/29

Interview project (30%): The first step is to interview someone--or more than one person--who has had direct experience with death and/or dying. You may wish to interview two people about the same issue. Some possibilities include:-

someone who has had someone close to him/her die; his/her spiritual advisor (rabbi, priest, minister, etc.)-

a case worker at a hospice; a dying person at a hospice; someone who doesn't work with hospice but who treats terminally ill people-

a person in a nursing home; their care givers; their insurers-

clergy and funeral directors-

someone with AIDS; someone who works with AIDS patients-

a cop; a medic

Some things you MUST do: get permission from the person to use their interview for a paper; find out if they want their own named used or not; if you want to tape the interview, get permission for that; be polite and sensitive, but don't be afraid to ask for what (you think) you want to know; be open to hearing things that might upset you or challenge you.

The next step is to bring the data you have collected, in the form of a transcript of your interview, your notes of the interview, whatever, and to examine it in your small group. Since the interview itself does not a project make, you must now reflect on , think about, ask questions about what you have discovered in the interview(s). This is something to do collaboratively with your group. Help each other discern the approach you want to take with this material. Consider the following questions (these are only suggestions--what questions could you add? Which are irrelevant to you? Why?): What did you expect? What did you find? How did you influence what you discovered? What did you forget/not think to ask? Who is this person? Did anything they say corrobo rate or contradict the theories we've been reading/discussing in class? What did they know that the theorists didn't? Which parts of the interview were most compelling to you? Why? Which parts will you focus on/use in writing up this project?

Through discussion with your group, try to get a sense of what your main questions/issues are. Put your own experience into conversation with the interview material. What do you need to say about this material? Develop a thesis/theme/main idea that you th ink reflects this material and explain how and why. It can be as simple as "what I learned from this interview is..."; or you can be more complex and actually put this into conversation with the readings. (If you're feeling really daring, you may want to "borrow" material from a group member- with their permission, of course--and compare your experience/interveiw with theirs.)

Next, write up your findings. You may want to focus on those things which are most compelling. I'm only recommending 5 pages. (A Note on Page Limits: Page limits are not hard and fast; think instead of a pot of chili--the bigger the pot the more stuff you can throw in, but you've also got to up the seasoning. A page limit gives you a guideline for how many peppers to cut up and how much chili powder you need to toss in. Obviously a 2 page paper will need less detail, thought, argument, etc., than a 5 page paper, and that needs less than a 10 pager. If you only put enough chili powder for a 2 page paper into a 5 pager, you have a weak mix.)

For the second group session, bring in enough (typed, double-spaced) copies of your paper so that each person in your working group can have one. Discuss them in your group; offer suggestions for revision. I suspect the best way to do this would be to wor k in pairs, or some other way where each person is reading only one other paper. I'll give you a worksheet for peer review that will help you with revision suggestions. Let each other know what worked and what didn't. Do a final revision on the paper for the next week.

[This project is adapted from an assignment developed by Dr. Ruth Tonner Ost, Temple University.]

DUE DATES:
Transcript: 7/22
Initial Draft: 7/27
Final Draft: 7/29

Ethical Case Study (30%): First, decide with your working group if you want to do this collaboratively or individually (this is either/or--all members of the group must either do it as a group project or do it individually; not 3 group members working together and one working alone or whatever). Then decide on a case your group wants to study. I will present some possibilities, but if your group wants to design its own, that's fine, as long as you check with me before proceeding to the next step. If you work as a group, you must (obviously) do the same case; as individuals you can each choose different cases if you want.

For the write up of the case, we will use the following procedure (we'll do an example together in class, so if you don't understand something now, don't worry):

1. Identify at least five ethical issues this case presents. Any given situation usually has several contestable issues, or it would be rather simple to make a decision. What are the issues that complicate this case?
2. Identify a theorist who deals with at least one of these ethical issues. I use the term theorist very loosely here. Look back over what we've read in class and find an author who you think is addressing an issue in this case. Maybe the author is a poet or a fiction writer, but her work makes you think differently about this issue. If you know of another writer we haven't read for this class, you can use him or her; maybe one of the recommended books deals with this. Say something about what the author says and how it impacts this issue.
3. Define three central concepts/technical terms/ethical issues/etc. What do you need to define to make the case clearer? If you've got a case about hospice, what is hospice? If the case is about deciding when someone is actually dead, what is

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