This is your chance to explore more in depth subjects dealt with only briefly in class or to pursue areas not covered in class. Graduate students should prepare their papers in the form of a bibliographical (or historiographical) essay. Please feel free to contact me with questions about what that means.
The final paper will emerge in three stages: A one-page proposal, due Monday, October 26 An annotated bibliography, due Monday, November 16 A ten- to twelve-page paper, due in class Monday, December 7 |
Guidelines for the proposal
The proposal should be about 1/2 page in length and should include a description of your proposed project, a brief statement about how and why you chose the subject, and your ideas about the approach you might take and how you will go about the work. Please feel free to make an appointment to talk with me if you need help defining your topic. For possible ideas, see below.
Guidelines for the annotated bibliography
The purpose of this bibliography is to get you to consider available resources and how they might fit together early on. You may very well need to use interlibrary loan or other libraries in your preparation, and putting together a list of relevant scholarship will insure that you allow yourself the time to make any necessary arrangements.
As a guide, you should use at least eight independent sources in your research; at least one must be a journal article or essay and one may be an internet source.
Please remember that while encyclopedias of all kinds can be invaluable jumping off points, they are essentially summaries of existing scholarship, and you need to seek out that scholarship directly (ergo, they do not count as one of your eight sources).
The bibliography should follow Chicago Style as described in The Chicago Manual of Style or Kate Turabian, A Manual for Writers. You can also find most of what you need to know about Chicago Style at this University of Wisconsin site: http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocChicago.html. For citing Internet sources in a modified Chicago Style, see the following website: http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/cite7.html. For help in evaluating web documents, see the following Cornell University site: Criteria and Tools for Evaluating Web Sites http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/research/webeval.html.
Each entry should be followed by a brief paragraph (2-3 sentences) that is both descriptive and evaluative, explaining how this source (book, article, chapter from book, web document) is relevant to your research and assessing its critical worth. The bibliography should be written carefully and proofread for errors before being handed in.
Guidelines for the final paper
Your paper should be ten to twelve pages, double-spaced with the usual margins (1” at top and bottom, 1.25” left and right.) Please remember to include page numbers. You must cite in a footnote or endnote all sources which you quote or paraphrase, as well as works to which you refer or from which you have culled information. Please follow Chicago Style citation format (Humanities Style) as described in the resources listed above. Parenthetic citations with a “Works Cited” page will not be accepted.
In addition to footnotes or endnotes, your paper should also contain a bibliography (not annotated this time) including not only those works you cited directly, but also anything else you used for background in the course of your research (including encyclopedia entries, general histories, and so forth). The bibliography page does not count as one of your ten to twelve pages of text. Again, please follow Chicago Style.
Please note that this should be a well-edited ten to twelve pages. If you find you are coming up short on length, do not try to fluff out what is already there! Come see me, and I will undoubtedly be able to help you direct your attention to any number of issues in need of further exploration or explanation. Please remember that a good paper should ultimately contain some sort of thesis.
Spelling, grammar and writing quality count as well as content.
And Finally, please review my plagiarism policy to avoid unintentional violations.
Deadline, extensions, and late papers
Final Papers are due in class on Monday, December 7. Extensions will be granted only in cases of extreme necessity. In any case, requests for extensions must be made by 1:00 PM Friday, December 4 at the latest. I will want to see the work you have completed and will need you to explain why you need an extension and how that will impact on the rest of your coursework and exams.
Papers that are late without an approved extension will lose one partial letter grade for each day they are late.
I f you need to contact me about your paper, you can call me at 358-0186 or e-mail me at dklepper@bu.edu