Course Syllabus for Writing the Research Paper
In the fall semester of her junior year, the Humanities student shall write two research themes of at least 2000 words each, on some aspect of a single area of the humanities, such as history, literature, art, music, religion, or the history of science. The themes should discuss the current context of a modern issue, and its roots and development in the ancient, medieval, and Renaissance periods. One of these themes must be written in the foreign language she is studying. In spring of her junior year, the student shall write a research paper of at least 7000 words on an interdisciplinary theme relating two or more fields in the humanities.
...Successful completion of the Core Curriculum in Humanities is required for graduation...
Paraphrased from the requirements for students in the Core Curriculum in Humanities, Scripps College for Women, 1968, devised by Philip Merlan
The dread moment has arrived, when you are assigned a research paper. Not a homework assignment, which would cover only material in books you already own or material listed in the course syllabus. Not an exam essay, which, having mastered the techniques of the first year dialectic student, you could now dash off in an hour or two after studying the material covered by the essay subject. A research paper means wracking your brains to find a topic that you can stand to think about for six or seven weeks (or, if you are going for your Ph.D., six or seven years) and that will also be something your instructor will approve. A research paper means setting your own boundaries for the topic and hoping you covered enough material, because 40% of your course grade rests on the paper. A research paper means trips in the rain to the library to look at material that doesn't circulate, endless hours waiting for web pages to load, smudged 3x5 cards full of notes you may not need, and actually cleaning up your room to find that blue Sticky Note with the page number for the final citation you need to footnote before you can turn the thing in and get some sleep.
A research paper can also be fun. Research is about answering questions. If you ask a question that interests you, find the answer, and share it with others, you've given something of yourself to others. If you ask a question that also interests others, you've helped them in their job, whatever it is.
As with writing the essay, the first step in writing the research paper is to determine its purpose. Research involves asking a question and looking for the answer, but questions are never asked in a vacuum. You need to be aware of the context of the question. What assumptions will you make to start with?
Other factors affect the context of the question you may ask. Are you writing on an assigned subject? You will probably still need to limit your approach to it. Are you free to chose your area with some broad parameters? Then you may need make more decisions. Either way, start with listing the possibilities facing you.
Suppose that you are taking a course on filmmaking, and you need to write a paper on the American movie. That's all the teacher has specified for the subject matter; but he's added the requirement that your paper cannot focus on a single movie, actor, or producer. The context of the question then is to some extent dictated by the instructor and the course material so far, which presumes that such a thing as a distinctly American movie exists, and that it is definable. [If your course has defined this, then you need to stick to that definition or explain any deviations from it as you move along.]
Now you need to generate ideas. This is a creative process; you may want to do a little research ahead of time, and review class notes or check a couple of definitions. Then you need to find a half-hour or so when you can think about the possibilities for addressing the subject assigned and write down all of them — no matter how silly they sound — for later analysis.
First brainstorm. Ask yourself questions about the proposed subject and give some suggestions for answers). Make lists of things that go together. If you have a hard time doing this by yourself, find another student and make it a word association game. Move quickly from one idea to the next, and don't criticize anything yet.
By now, you should have gone from one extreme to the other. Instead of wondering how to come up with one subject, you are going to have to make a decision. Which of all the fascinating ideas you've written down do you have the time and energy to pursue, and which of those will fit the requirements of the assignment? Usually, there is an overlap between what you want to write and something you have to write.
Here, a survey of multiple movies seems most suited to the teacher's aim. Let's say that you are interested in genre movies like musicals and science fiction. Perhaps an interesting research subject would combine points of questions 1, 4, and 5 above.
Now look at your ideas in terms of the purpose of your paper. This may be something that you choose, but it is often something dictated by the instructor.
This is the "state of the art" paper. You want to find out what other people think and have said about a subject area. Your major sources will be secondary works that express someone else's interpretation or opinions. You may need to evaluate different opinions or statements by some criteria, such as reasonableness, basis in known facts or evidence, or suitability to the problem. Even if your paper is really an analysis of the subject itself or original research, you may need to summarize the statements of other authorities before going on to present your own work. Students are sometimes assigned this type of paper when they need to develop a broad picture of current work in a field.
This can also be a summary or evaluation paper, but here the concern is the subject, not other people's opinions of the subject. You will need to break down the problem into parts, discuss in detail each part, and then show the relationship of the parts to each other and the whole. Rather than looking mostly at what other people have written about something, you will look at the original object, data,or primary source materials themselves. You'll run into this kind of research project in history, literature, and the arts.
You want to find out something specific; the answer may or may not be already known (a good subject involves original research into an area where some definitive answer doesn't already exist). As with analyzing a subject, you will focus on documents, artifacts, or experiments in the lab, but this time you are looking for something specific, not trying to understand the whole thing. The process of writing this kind of paper is very much like trying to solve a mystery1, and you may not know for sure whether you have been successful, so you will have to demonstrate good research techniques, at the very least.
For our example, we can combine some aspects of each of these. We will need authorities on how film affects and reflects culture; we'll need to look at particular examples of genre films and the periods that produced them, and we'll need to ask a question about the relationship of those films to the culture that we can try to answer.
Just as there are poorly stated essay questions, so there are also bad research subjects.
Here, the teacher has limited movies to "American" ones, so we should stick to those produced in or by American studios or independents. We cannot survey all of the thousands of movies made, so we'll pick a couple with which we are already familiar, and which are related to time periods or aspects of American culture that are easily defined. We want to ask something about how genre movies like musicals and science fiction reflect American culture, and we will need to say something about why these are more likely to be distinctly American than a general drama movie (maybe by comparison with some foreign films).
Having gone through the analysis of possible subjects and narrowed them down, you now need to explain the context of your question, state the question, and propose how you will answer it. Notice that you don't yet give the answer, because at this stage, you should not prejudice your research by assuming that you even know the answer!
Assumptions/Context: Movie-making is a primarily American form of art, having originated in Holywood during the early 1900s. Even with the spread of movie-making efforts first to England (which adopted it early, because of its own fascination with and traditions of stage drama) and then to other countries, most movies still come from studios in the United States. Some movie genres remain primarily an American effort even now. Westerns, of course, reflect a specific period in American history. But the genres of the musical and the science fiction movie, which are not necessarily bound to specific historical incidents, appear to be peculiarly American.
Research Question: Why are most musicals and science fiction movies American in origin? What aspects of American culture do they reflect?
Proposal for Solving it: Identify and examine several typical musicals from the big MGM period (1940s-1960s) and several science fiction movies from the 1950s-2000. Identify common themes and show how they are related to contemporary events or issues in American history. This will require looking at the scripts or viewing the movies, researching chronologies for contemporary events, and looking at political and cultural implications of those events and their possible relationship to the ideas and themes expressed int he selected films.
1The mystery Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey is in fact the story of a Scotland Yard Inspector's attempt to solve the historical question of whether Richard III killed his nephews; no one knows for sure.
2Since this unit was originally designed, significant work has been done and as of December 2021, nearly 5000 exoplanets discovered, but none so far in orbit around Sirius B with mass as great as 10 Jupiter masses. There may be smaller planets, but we still don't have the ability to determine their atmospheres.
Enter your response directly into the Scholars Online Writing the Research Paper Moodle forum for this unit. Review the submissions from your fellow students and offer constructive criticism to help them refine their ideas.
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