The Senior Essay

The senior essay (also called "the B.A. essay") is one of the requirements for students admitted to the intensive major.

Standard majors are also sometimes allowed to write a senior essay, though only with the consent of the Director of Undergraduate Studies, to whom they should apply early in the third quarter of their junior year. If they receive permission to do so, they must take, just as intensive majors must do, the two courses which are designed to help students in this project - Philosophy 29901 (Senior Seminar I) and Philosophy 29902 (Senior Seminar II). (It should be noted, however, that unlike students in the intensive program they receive only one quarter worth of Departmental major credit for taking both of these courses).

Although each of these two courses - 29901 and 29902 - carries a quarter's worth of College course credit, students receive a single grade for both the courses, based upon their work on the B.A. essay. The reason for this is that the Senior Essay represents a major project involving more than just a single quarter's work. While Philosophy 29901 and 29902 bear the title "Senior Seminar", the Senior Seminar itself meets over all three quarters. It serves as a forum in which 4th-year students writing a B.A. essay present to one another for mutual criticism parts of their work in progress, and the course takes place under the supervision of the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Students may write their senior essay on any topic in philosophy they choose, though they will need to secure the agreement of a member of the Philosophy Department to supervise their work. In recent years, topics have included: omniscience and free will, the expression of emotion in music, Aristotle's ethics, the nature of coercion, Wittgenstein's legacy, the idea of authenticity, and the philosophy of Michel Foucault.

BA Essay APPLICATIONS are due Monday of the seventh week of Spring Quarter