You have been working all semester to find your interests, identify an issue, and immerse yourself in the conversation about that issue to decide on the specific question you want to answer with your research project. It’s now time to present your answer to an audience of your choosing in a format of your choosing. The requirements for this assignment are fairly straightforward:
Make an arguable claim for a specific audience drawing on the sources you have found, read, and evaluated carefully this semester.
No part of this project should be composed with generative AI–my goal is to help you learn how to make decisions about writing, and that means you need to decide on your own.
Format
Will you state your claim directly in an introductory paragraph or will you convey it in some other way? Will you produce a paper in Microsoft Word, a blog post on our course website, a script for a video essay or podcast episode, or something else? What is the best way for you to present the results of your research to your audience?
Sources
I am not going to stipulate the kind of sources you need to use, nor am I going to require a particular number of sources. Your question will guide the sort of sources you need and I think you’ll know when you need more sources because there will be things you need to better understand (I will help if you’re not sure).
Process
When we meet individually on October 27 and 29, I will want to see your research notes organizer (remember, you can adjust how this is organized to suit your preferences!) and a draft introduction and roadmap for your project. I will update our schedule for the rest of the semester after we’ve had these individual conferences and I have a better sense of what we all need to work on together.
Here’s what you should prepare for next week (make sure you bring this with you to our meeting):
My research question at this point is [put a specific question here]
I want to argue that [put your tentative claim here–this should be an answer to your research question]
I am going to do this by creating a [paper/blog post/podcast/video essay].
I am preparing this for [describe your audience here].
[draft your introduction and sketch out how you think you will organize the points you want to make and the sources you want to cite. This can be in the form of a detailed outline or some other way of presenting your plan. Keep your audience in mind–this will help you make decisions about what to use when]
