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Term Paper
At the end of the semester you will be required to submit a research paper or a thesis- style essay of no less than 10 pages. The topic is up to you, but it must meet two criteria.
First, it must be about popular culture. For the purposes of this course, "popular culture" means those artifacts, mentifacts or behaviors that are common, contemporary or commercial. Second, the topic must be analyzed, evaluated and discussed from a geographic perspective.
Students will complete the paper in a series of steps. The first step is to submit a one page research proposal. The proposal must contain at least three paragraphs. The first paragraph will contain a rationale statement in which the author explains why this topic is worthy of consideration. The second paragraph will make clear the research hypothesis or thesis statement. The third paragraph will briefly describe the methodology you plan to employ and the data source you plan to use to either test your hypothesis or defend your thesis. In some instances, your methodology will be Socratic and the "data" used to defend your position will be ideas or logic.
Due: _________________
A good second step in the research process is data acquisition and methodology construction. Students must "find the data" before they rush headlong into a research project. Frequently students have a great research question but can not begin to answer it because they have no "data".
Depending on the nature of your paper, data may be numeric, visual, sonic or textual. Data is the evidence that you will gather in order to make an argument or test a hypothesis. I strongly recommend that you not attempt to "create" your own data. There are enormous data sets about a variety of popular culture topics. I suggest you find the data and then try to devise a methodology appropriate to both your data and your research hypothesis or thesis statement. It is very important to remember that the characteristics of your data and the limits of any methodology may require you to change your research question or hypothesis. Your data and methods section should be no more than two and one half pages. VERY OFTEN, researchers need to consult with other researchers by scanning the existing literature before they settle on a method. FREQUENTLY, the methods are borrowed from existing research.
Due: ____________________
The third step in the research process is an exploration of previous research or commentary on your subject. You will be responsible for constructing a partial literature review for your paper. The literature review will list and briefly state the relevance of no less than 7 other research articles, books or other sources to your topic. This should be no more than two and one half pages. Literature may be relevant on a variety of bases. Some literature may be similar to yours in terms of topic, other research may guide your methodology (but be topically different), some literature may guide you because it is simply inspirational, or demonstrates that your type of research is legitimate.
Due: _________________________
A first draft of you paper is due a week or two before the final. Writing multiple drafts of a paper is a key component of the learning and writing process. Get used to it.
The final product of your essay will be due the last week of the semester. It should include a revised introduction, a revised literature review and a revised data and methods section, along with a newly constructed findings or discussion section and conclusion. The conclusion should include a summary of your findings, including a judgment on the plausibility of your hypothesis or a reiteration of your thesis statement; a statement recognizing the limitation of your study, and a call for further research.
Due: _____________________
Bonus: If you present your work at a professional conference, you will be awarded a 10% bonus for the final portion of this assignment, resulting in a letter grade improvement.
