Writing a compelling, concise response paper is very difficult, especially when the material is new. You want to avoid a summary, but it’s not a research paper (with a claim and findings), either. With these issues in mind, here are some suggestions for approaching your response papers this term. These suggestions may not work for you, though. Feel free to take them or leave them.

• Read, reread, and annotate the two assigned texts for the week. After you read and annotate, step away from the texts for a bit, if you have the time.
• At some point, summarize the key arguments in your own language. This should help you better understand the claims being made while also putting them in terms more familiar to you. In the process, you might ask: For whom is this argument being made? By whom? When? In what context? Under what assumptions? With what methods and techniques? What or who is missing? Why? To what effects on our understanding of . . .? Where and why do I disagree or agree? Resist the urge to make the texts you’re reading cohere. They don’t.
• After the summaries (portions of which you might want to include in your response paper), identify an interesting topic working across the texts (e.g., the separation of nature from culture, the definition of art, or the articulation of labour). Imagine this topic as a stage where your texts meet to converse. Privilege it over the texts themselves. Indeed, make the paper about this topic and the conversation that ensues.
• Begin writing your response as a conversation between your texts about the topic you’ve selected. Refrain from much, if any, summary. Avoid describing the works you’ve read and annotated (after all, your texts are right there, on stage with you). Jump right into it (in media res), as if you’re moderating the conversation and you want the texts to respond with remarks they didn’t already make. When they respond, feel free to interject, disagree, or stress what they’re ignoring. Call them on their omissions and hiccups.
• As you write, consider where the texts at hand differ and overlap with regard to your topic. Stress why those differences and overlaps matter (instead of simply comparing and contrasting the texts). You might even consider how such differences are produced in the texts. What logics, assumptions, histories, or values allow them to distinguish between this and that? How do they make cuts or distinctions (between subject and object, nature and culture, foreground and background, material and immaterial)?
• Treat your topic as a moderated conversation and a line of inquiry you wish to sustain for 500-750 words. (You may even imagine it as part of a longer conversation.) Wherever possible, keep that line of inquiry concrete and focused, anchored in particulars without much, if any, quotation. With only 750 words (max), you may only need three or four paragraphs for your response paper. There’s no need to make a claim or an argument here. The response is about your staged topic and conversation and the interesting things that emerge from them. Down the line, perhaps these are interesting things you could research in depth, for a thesis, essay, or the like.
• In your paragraphs, move back and forth between the texts. This movement may generate differences and overlaps you had not considered before.
• If you wish, then end that line of inquiry with a question or two, written in such a way that it follows organically from the conversation (as opposed to including questions in contiguous point form after your last paragraph).
• Turn the draft in before we meet to discuss the texts at hand. After submitting it, review the feedback, revise the paper, leave it alone for a bit, and then return to it again for one or two more rounds of revision. If possible, share the work with friends and/or me to get more feedback and additional impressions.

Hope this helps! Let me know what questions or concerns you have.

These are notes for the seminar. Please excuse any typos or errors. If you see any, then please bring them to my attention. Thank you!