Reading is more than recognizing words. It’s being able to ingest complex ideas, follow arguments, and evaluate evidence. It’s about having an opinion about something you read. It’s a difficult skill earned only through practice. Sometimes the practice is difficult and frustrating. That’s when you’re learning.
The point of the assignment isn’t to produce a thing, it’s to sharpen your mind. So please don’t use AI with these, even though it’s tempting. We have assignments in the course that use AI because using it well is a valuable skill in itself, but this one you should do on your own. Don’t bring a forklift into the weight room.
Also, think about what AI gives you when you ask it about a reading: a competent, reasonable, completely generic response. The problem is that everyone can get the same thing, instantly, which means it’s worth almost nothing.
I’m looking for a specific insight, a connection to your own life, a comparison to a previous history class, an overlap with another UNM course, an objection grounded in the course material, a judgment about what matters in the real world.
To earn credit, you have to do more than AI would do. Obviously “more” does not mean more words. It means more substance, more depth, more personal connection, more opinion, more reaction. A generic summary—the thing AI gives you by default (whether you use it or not)—earns a zero because you can get that without thinking, and I need to see you thinking.
There is no “correct” answer here, only more or less informed and thoughtful refraction. Everyone finds something different interesting in a reading; I want to see yours. I care less about what you think than the fact you legitimately tried.
Each refraction covers a whole week, so you have two sessions and two sets of readings to work with. Write about whatever actually grabbed you — you don’t have to cover everything, and a refraction that chases one idea hard is better than one that surveys four.
What I do want is a refraction that could only have been written by someone who both did the reading and was in the conversation. Our discussions go places the readings don’t, and the best refractions tend to start there: an argument a classmate made that you kept thinking about, a moment where the room split, something you wanted to say in class and didn’t, a point you made that you’ve since decided was wrong.
I’m not asking for a formula or a required sentence. But if a refraction reads like it was written by someone who never showed up, that’s usually because it was — and it will land in the bottom half of the scale.
Every session on the schedule has discussion questions under it. They exist to prime our conversation, and they’re a reasonable place to start thinking. Do not answer them directly in your refraction.
Two reasons. A question posted on a public web page is the easiest thing in the world to paste into a chatbot, and what comes back is exactly the competent, generic response this assignment exists to push you past. And if thirty people answer the same question, I get thirty versions of one paragraph, none of which tells me anything about the person who wrote it.
Use them as a running start if you’re stuck, then go somewhere they didn’t send you. In practice the strongest refractions aren’t answering any posted question at all.
These are some strategies that reliably take a refraction past generic. You don’t need all of them—one done well is plenty. Reach for whichever fits the reading and your interests.
Each of these requires something that lives outside the reading—a stance, a comparative perspective, your own confusion, a real-world example. Summary just echoes what’s already on the page. Engagement produces something new.
Each refraction is scored as:
I generally avoid plusses and minuses but you might get one occasionally.
One refraction per week, due Thursday by midnight, submitted via Canvas. The refraction covers that week — both sessions, both sets of readings.
There are eight of them, in weeks 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, and 13. You will never have a refraction due the same night as something else — when another assignment lands on a Thursday, that week simply has no refraction. Check the schedule; every one is marked in a red box.
I drop your lowest, so seven count. You don’t need to explain a missed week, ask permission, or send me an email — get sick, have a brutal work stretch, hit a week where three other classes all want something, and the drop absorbs it.
To be clear, the drops apply only to these weekly refractions. They do not apply to the Historians Café, the 1619 post, the Early or Final Course Reflection, or the Campus History project. Those are individually graded and none of them can be dropped.
The assignment stays open until Friday at midnight, one day late, for one full letter grade.
That window is there for your benefit, not as a trap. A day is enough to recover from a bad Thursday, and one grade is a real cost but not a catastrophe — a late B still beats a zero by a wide margin. It is always better to turn something in late than not at all. After Friday midnight it closes, because a refraction written three weeks after we discussed the reading isn’t doing the thing this assignment is for.
Sometimes a week goes badly wrong in a way a drop and a day don’t cover — you get genuinely sick, something happens at home, work or family or health takes over for a stretch. Please reach out to the TA. Before Friday if you can manage it, and after if you couldn’t; we would far rather hear from you late than not at all.
You don’t need documentation, and you don’t need to explain more than you’re comfortable explaining. This is a normal part of a semester and we deal with it all the time — nobody is going to be annoyed with you for asking. The only outcome we actually want to avoid is you quietly disappearing from a course you could have finished.