Advice on SC papers

• Treat as many of the readings as possible. Each SC paper covers about five weeks, i.e. around 15 assigned readings plus those you selected on your own. You certainly don't have to mention every single paper within this set of around 20 (and I much prefer an intelligent treatment to "name dropping"), but do try to work as many as possible--meaningfully--into your SC.
• Focus on the operation of SC - don't summarize articles more than required to make your points clear.
• Don't forget to be critical (i.e. treat articles as "sources" rather than "references"). You might devote an entire section of your SC to a critical review (treating such things as method, theoretical perspective, insider/outsider dynamics, position within the history of ideas, etc.), or you can scatter your criticism throughout.
• Synthesize by comparing and contrasting. It helps to make identify a list of themes or topics; each becomes a lens through which you can regard a subset of the readings. The same articles may recur in more than one section--in fact this is a good thing--but don't allow your entire paper to be dominated by only one or two.
• Stay close to the readings. Don't make general statements without backing them up.
• Keeping the above points in mind, you may be as creative as you like. Feel free to introduce your own ideas into the mix.