The main piece of writing that you will produce in this class is a project proposal. 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 project, our goal is to take the semester to conceive of and plan a project, 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 project (if it's a piece of writing) or a prototype of your project (if it is delivered in some other medium), that is a huge bonus. However, our primary goal is to develop a detailed proposal.
You will work on this proposal throughout the course of the semester. As you complete reading log entries, you'll write about how our readings are informing your thinking about the project, and 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 twice, once on October 25 and once on the final day of class. 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 project 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 and/or creative activity? This section allows you to show how your work is part of a broader conversation. This section can be written as an annotated bibliography (a list of sources with brief summaries of each source), or it can be written in prose form where you weave together the sources and tell the story of how others have conducted work that is similar to your proposed project.
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 in this project. One way to think of this is in terms of publication, if this is a piece of writing. What publications would be ideal for your project? If it's a creative project, you should be thinking of venues (galleries? festivals? conferences?) and 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 and/or creative activity? 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 this is primarily a creative project, what material will you be working with?
Method
How do you propose to conduct your analysis and/or creative activity? Why? Are you using an existing method? If so, describe that method (citing appropriate sources) and describe how you'll use it. Are you mixing methods? If so, describe the methods you're mixing and how/why you're planning to mix them. Are you attempting to build your own method? If so, describe that method and how it's related to other existing methods. 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 this 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/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 25% of your grade. When responding to your proposal, here are the questions I will be asking:
- Does the proposal provide a detailed account of your project?
- Is the proposal detailed and specific?
- Have you described in detail, what you propose to do, how you propose to do it, why you propose to do it?
- Are you getting the idea that the document is supposed to be detailed?
- Is each section organized and is the document as a whole organized? In other words, do the sections make sense both on their own and in relationship to one another? More specific versions of this question might be: Does your method match your goal for the project? Does your medium make sense in terms of your method and goals? Does your literature review provide the broader "conversation" that your project is trying to join?
- Are your research questions clearly articulated and justified?
- Does the proposal reflect that you have spent a great deal of time researching your project and considering work that is similar to it?
- Does the second submission reflect that you have significantly revised the proposal and incorporated feedback?
- Is the document prepared in such a way that it could be credibly used to begin work on your proposed project?
