Overview
Your book review will be based on the review text you select from those listed in the syllabus. You may review up to a maximum of two books for credit, with each review worth up to 15 points. Reviews should be 800 words minimum (no maximum). This assignment is not like a book report you may have completed in high school; you should avoid summarizing or re-stating the themes of the book. Instead, use your book review to address the following three questions.
- What does the text suggest about social norms and boundaries?
- Based on the authors’ or editors’ approach to the issues or any explicitly stated philosophy, what is the text’s underlying political and social agenda? The answer to this question should not be: “the book’s subject is…”, but rather, an identification of what the authors’ or editors’ want. What changes in policy, practice, or social structures do they want to bring about? What are they trying to persuade their readers of?
- How does the text relate to the course reserve readings, lectures or other materials? Be very explicit--- citing other readings, concepts from lectures, films, or speakers specifically. What does the text add to your understanding of the issues we are addressing in this course? Just mentioning course materials is not adequate. You should explain how they relate to the book or vice versa.
You should only review one of the books listed in the syllabus; substitutions will not be accepted. Book reviews will be graded based on: a) Clearly answering each of the three questions above, and b) Demonstrating that you’ve read, engaged with and thought carefully about the book.
The approved list of book review texts is below:
- Illness or Deviance?: Drug Courts, Drug Treatment, and the Ambiguity of Addiction, by Jennifer Murphy
- COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories: QAnon, 5G, the New World Order and Other Viral Ideas, by Wendy Welch, et al
- Medicine Stories: Essays for Radicals, by Aurora Levins Morales
- Youth Justice in America, by Maryam Ahranjani, Jamin B. Raskin & Andrew G. Ferguson
- Race Against Time: The Politics of A Darkening America, by Keith Boykin
- Beauty Junkies, by Alex Kuczynski
- The Purity Myth, by Jessica Valenti
- Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and U.S. Surveillance Practices, by Toby Beauchamp
- Moms Gone Mad: Mothering and Madness, Oppression and Resistance, by Gina Wong
- AOC: The Fearless Rise and Powerful Resonance of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, by Lynda Lopez
- The Cruelty is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America, by Adam Serwer
- Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right is Warping the American Imagination, by Alexandra Minna Stern
For written assignments, please use double-spacing, 12-point font, and insert page numbers. No particular essay style is required, but your papers should involve paragraphs, rather than notes. When citing materials, you may use any academic citation style (e.g. APA, MLA, ASA), as long as you use it consistently. You must cite all sources used. You may use footnotes, endnotes, or in-text citations with a bibliography, to cite your sources. Uploads may be in PDF or Word only. Bruin Learn will not open documents uploaded in Pages, or other alternate word processing software.
Important: No assignments have “hidden” or unstated requirements not indicated explicitly in the syllabus, or in the assignment in Bruin Learn. There are no requirements regarding writing style or tone, and no formatting requirements besides those listed in this syllabus. Grammar and writing skill are not part of the grading criterion, although proofreading is recommended. All students are invited to make a free appointment with the UCLA Writing Center, for assistance in developing your writing ability.
Per the UCLA Code of Conduct, plagiarism is a form of academic misconduct. Incidents of plagiarism may be reported to the College, and may be subject to further discipline. Assignments containing plagiarized material will not receive any credit. Plagiarism includes submitting the work of someone else, adopting language from another published work without quotations and attribution (citations), using artificial intelligence software to write for you or to re-write/edit your work, or resubmitting your own work for two different assignments. In this course, students are discouraged from using any software that includes an AI component that changes wording, including Grammarly or translation software that combines translation with AI re-writing.