Position Papers

Chapter Opener

10

require a brief critical response

require a brief critical response

How to start

  • Confused?
  • Read the assignment carefully

Position Papers

A course instructor may ask you to respond to an assigned reading, lecture, film, or other activity with a position paper in which you record your reactions to the material, such as your impressions or observations. Such a paper is usually brief — often not much longer than a page or two — and due the next class session. Typically, you won’t have time for more than a draft and quick revision.

  • image You summarize and assess the findings of a journal article studying the relationship between a full night’s sleep and student success on college exams.
  • image You speculate about how a feminist philosopher of science, whose work you have read for a class, might react to recent developments in genetics.
  • image You respond to ideas raised by a panel of your classmates discussing a proposition to restore the military draft or require an alternative form of national service.
  • image You offer a gut reaction to your first-ever viewing of Triumph of the Will, a notorious propaganda film made by director Leni Riefenstahl for Germany’s National Socialist (Nazi) Party in 1935.