Write an argumentative research paper (20-25 pages) about one of the books on our syllabus.  Use the primary text and secondary sources to support your argument.  The essay should be an interpretive argument supported by textual evidence and your own reasoning as you have written for other English classes, but it should have a larger scope than those essays and be more fully developed with secondary sources. 

Formulating a Topic

To begin the process, select a book that interests you from our syllabus. You may choose the same book on which you made your presentation, but if you do, consider connecting the presentation book to another work (on or off the syllabus) so that you don't get bored. You don't have to select a book until FEBRUARY 6 or 7 so take time to read through the books on the syllabus, talk to classmates who are researching them for their presentations, or talk to me about particular books/ideas.

Once you have selected a book, read it carefully.  Keep track of questions that arise as you read or problems or patterns that recur.  Connect the book to other reading you've done for other classes.  You may see how a writer deals with an issue/theme in a similar way as an author you have read before. 

After a week or two of reading and annotating, begin to isolate the questions that interest you most.  Make sure the questions are interpretive/argumentative and not just questions that lead you to a fact-based, purely historical kind of paper (i.e., not what geographical landmarks are present in Lyrical Ballads? but how does Wordsworth transform geographical landmarks for a particular political purpose?).  Look for connections among your questions, and begin to speculate about some possible answers for your questions.  Isolate your questions into several clusters that could lead to full-fledged research papers.

While you're annotating in this fashion or after you've finished, begin to look at secondary materials.  Consider whether other critics have the same questions/concerns that you have.  How do you fit into the critical conversation about the book?  Do critics have readings that fit with your readings?  Might you spin your reading in a different way or expand in a different direction?  Make sure that you do not go in the exact direction that another critic does—there's no point in trying to write a paper that has already been written.  Also keep careful track of which thoughts are yours and which ones belong to the critics you're reading. Of course you will use and build upon the ideas of other critics, but you must make sure to give them credit when you do.

After you've read and thought about the book and the secondary articles carefully, you must take the most difficult step: choose a preliminary topic.  Talk to me and your peers to help gauge how promising your topic might be.  You might consider writing a discovery draft in which you write through your idea, noting gaps in your argument as you go, but mostly just trying to see where the topic takes you.  Settling on a topic is generally the most difficult step.

Prospectus & Outline

Once you've settled on a topic, you will write a prospectus to explain your project. A prospectus is a proposal (around 750-1000 words in length) that narrows a field of inquiry, selects a topic, a title, and a stance (audience, thesis, critical approach to material) and conveys in concrete terms the importance of the project in creating new knowledge out of your analysis and research.  You should include:

• A tentative title for your paper.  The title should define the topical area and imply a stance.  You might take a look at titles of articles on your subject as found in the MLAIB.
• Context and background.  This section of the prospectus gives the reader a relevant frame of reference (context) within which to understand your project as meaningful and important.  Often this involves describing the question or problem you have decided to address, and if pertinent, summarizing criticism that has addressed or failed to adequately address that question or problem.  Think of this as a way of explaining the place of your work, and the importance of your point in the critical conversation about your author.  Ex. “While Wordsworth critics have often talked about Freudian imagery in his poems, few have considered . . . and many have overlooked . . . .”
• Key terms and definitions, leading sources.  The prospectus should give evidence of your intentions to define important concept words and texts necessary for discourse in the field of study (literary criticism about your author). 
• A sense of your thesis, your strategies, methods.  This is the core of the paper and the prospectus.   What is your main idea, your tentative answer to the question or solution to a self-posed problem?  How will you organize your paper?  How will you rhetorically argue your thesis?  What critical theories/perspectives will you use?

Submit a tentative outline with your prospectus.  The outline will be a map of where you expect the essay to go.  Know that your prospectus and outline make up a proposal (not a binding contract) and as such they are flexible.  You may change your thesis completely as you complete further research, think through your argument, or write through your paper.  Your prospectus gives you a starting point and direction, but you may (and probably will) change your direction as you write the paper.

Drafting, Revising, and Editing

After I have approved your prospectus, you will have a few weeks to put together a rough draft of your project.  I (and your peers) will give you comments, and we will have conversations about how to improve your drafts.  After we discuss the drafts, you will develop the final product further and spend time editing and polishing your prose. 

Annotated Bibliography

This project requires you to submit an annotated bibliography with the final paper.  You only need to include entries for works that you used (from which you've taken ideas or words) for the paper and not everything you've consulted  The bibliography/works cited should be alphabetized by author.

Notes

As this description hopefully illustrates, writing your research paper will be like writing other papers you've written in English classes except that it will be longer and you will have done more research to produce your argument.  Here are some basic guidelines/warnings:

• YOU SHOULD DRIVE THE ESSAY, NOT YOUR RESEARCH.  You must formulate a preliminary thesis, preliminary outline, and prospectus BEFORE you begin drafting seriously.  This will help you focus the argument.  Sure you will change your argument some based on your reading, but if you think about your essay a lot before you begin writing, you will be more likely to stay in control.  Use evidence from other sources to support your views, but don’t let the views of others dominate. 
• Re-outlining the essay after you have written a draft is a useful strategy to make sure you're on track and to see how your argument is shaping up.  Outlining after helps you spot gaps in your argument and places that need to be more fully developed.
• As you draft, you may end up changing your thesis dramatically.  This is not a problem as long as you end up supporting your new thesis with your essay.
• The scale of this project often induces major anxiety.  Many of you will have never written a 25-page paper.  One way to manage this stress is to think of your paper as a series of closely-related paper.  For example, you might write the paper in sections, applying your basic thesis/theory to multiple poems, stories, or characters; or you might apply different but related theoretical/historical principles to the novel.
• Talk to me and your peers throughout the process of choosing your topic and drafting your essay--talking through your ideas is a great way to synthesize your thoughts and relieve anxiety.
• Don’t expect to find a source (and don’t look for one) that makes your case for you.  LOOK FOR INFORMATION/EXAMPLES THAT WILL HELP YOU MAKE YOUR OWN ARGUMENT.
• MAKE COPIES OF ALL THE ARTICLES YOU EXAMINE OR USE.  If there is a question about plagiarism, you want to be able to access your sources.  You also might find an article that helps one of your peers, so having a copy handy would facilitate sharing information.
• DO NOT USE WEB SOURCES THAT HAVE NOT BEEN REFEREED.  USE ONLY AUTHORITATIVE SOURCES THAT HAVE UNDERGONE A REVIEW PROCESS.