The main piece of writing that you will produce in this class is a research project proposal. You will submit this proposal three times, and each submission is worth 15% of your grade.
We are completing a proposal because it's very difficult to conceive of and execute a project within the condensed, 14-week time frame off a semester. Instead of trying to rush through and complete a full research essay, our goal is to take the semester to conceive of and plan a research project and to begin to develop a justification and approach to that project. If you get to a point where you can actually complete a draft of your research project, that is a huge bonus. However, our primary goal is to develop a detailed proposal. There is no specific length requirement for this prposal, but if you are doing the detailed work I am asking you to do it will likely be more than 10 pages (potentially much more).
You will work on this proposal throughout the course of the semester. We will do a number of writing activities designed to generate material for the proposal, and you will write and revise this lengthy document throughout the semester. At certain points during class, I'll ask you to pull up your current draft of the proposal and work on it. We'll also have opportunities to share our proposal drafts with one another during class.
You will submit your proposal ____ times. The goal is to continually revise the proposal throughout the semester, and when I provide feedback on it I will be focusing not only on your end product but also on your writing and design process. Are you incorporating feedback from me and others as your revise and rethink the project? This is an important thing to consider throughout the semester.
The Project Proposal is broken into the following sections.
Research Question
What do you want to ask, and why? Are you trying to solve a problem? If so, what is the problem and how are you proposing to solve it? Are you proposing to ask a question that others have asked? If so, how will your approach differ from previous approaches?
Genesis of Research Question
How did you arrive at this research project and research question? Is this an ongoing project that you have been working on for a while, or is it a new project? Is there a reading, author, or class that helped you develop this question or that helped clarify your thinking around it? Is this part of a longer creative or research trajectory in your work? Is it a break with the kind of work you usually do? These are the kinds of questions you can address in this question, but your primary goal is to give us context for the project and research question you want to pursue.
Literature Review
Who else has conducted similar research? This section allows you to show how your work is part of a broader conversation. This section will be written as an annotated bibliography (a list of sources with brief summaries of each source).
Audience
Who is the primary audience for your project? Many times, this section is linked to the previous one (Literature Review) since the people you cite in that previous section could be your audience. However, this is not always the case. Sometimes, your audience is different from those who have conducted similar research or carried out similar creative projects to yours. Regardless, your goal in this section is to explain who you're trying to address and persuade in this project. One way to think of this is in terms of publication. What publications would be ideal for your project? You should avoid answering this question with something like "the general public." Be as specific as possible when you think about your intended audience, even if those outside of your intended audience might encounter your work as well.
Material/Data
What material will you be working with in your analysis? If this is an archival project, what archives would you be drawing upon? If this is a data analysis project, what data will you analyze and how will you get that data? If you are imagining interviews and ethnographic work, who would you interview and what other materials would be part of your analysis? This section is about the "stuff" you're going to be researching.
Method
How do you propose to conduct your analysis and/or creative activity? Why? What method will you use? Describe that method (citing appropriate sources), and explain why this method is the best fit for the question you want to ask. Are you mixing methods? If so, describe the methods you're mixing and how/why you're planning to mix them. In addition to describing your method of analysis and/or production, be sure to justify your choice of method. Why have you chosen this method? What does it allow you to learn about your material, and how does it allow you to pursue your research question?
Medium/Form
What form or forms do you expect the project to take? Is it an essay or a paper? Explain why writing is the ideal medium for your project? Is it a video? An audio project? A videogame? Something else? This section should be where you describe what you plan to write and/or make and why that media form is the best fit for what you're trying to accomplish.
Expected findings, conclusions, and/or results
This is just a proposal, so you don't know what you will find or what the results will be. However, this section allows you to speculate a bit about what you think you will find or perhaps even what you hope the results will be. In this section, you might even talk through what you hope the audience will take from your project.
Each submission of your proposal is worth __%of your grade. When responding to your proposal, here are the questions I will be asking:
(Are you getting the idea that the document is supposed to be detailed?)