Posted: December 5th, 2014
Assignment:
based on the originality of your idea, the specificity and focus of your idea, and the effort you have put in to making this idea truly your own. Making it “your own”
means: asking questions, incorporating sources that you have found on your own (and showing how the sources we have already read together as a class have influenced
your train of thought regarding both your own sources and your idea as a whole), and showing that you care; that you are invested in or at least have an interest in
what you are discussing. The more specific you can get in narrowing down your field of inquiry, the better off you will be, both in terms of your grade for this
assignment and your preparedness when it comes to writing the research paper itself.
In terms of structuring your proposal, you might find the following format helpful:
1) Get into the topic. Write a compelling opening paragraph that sets the stage interestingly, and ideally in multiple dimensions, for what you will be
discussing. For instance, you might begin with an idea that fascinates you, or a current or historical event, or an event from your own life experience, or a rich
detail from one of your sources. Think of this as a way to set the stakes for what you will be getting into, or in other words, to establish the importance/worthiness
of your idea as a topic of research.
2) Define the topic itself. The more detailed you get here, the better. What sort of questions do you want to ask? What sorts of sources will help you to answer,
or at least further articulate, those questions? You do not need to have an argument or thesis yet, but you need to lay out the steps you will take towards finding an
argument.
3) Discuss the sources you have so far. These will include two of our readings from so far this semester. Important: your discussion of these sources should be
taking place on a relatively sophisticated level; although you might write a sentence or two summary of the new source you have found, your goal here is to think
through ideas (rather than giving a book report). Ideally, each of your sources will provide you with a different angle in on the central idea or problem of your
research paper. In this section, you will discuss what each of those angles are, and how they in turn open up new questions.
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