WR 150 B2 Heroes, Saints and Martyrs
Professor Klepper
Fall 2004
Ten-page paper on a topic within the broadly defined area of
Heroes, Saints, and Martyrs
The longer research paper will be on a topic related in some way to the subject of heroism, holiness, and/or martyrdom. Using the work we have done in class as a starting point, write a thesis-driven research paper exploring some issue raised by our reading. Support your arguments with evidence from your sources; make sure you substantiate your claims with reference to specific primary or secondary sources, and avoid vague, general comments or observations. You will be graded on the quality of your research (number, quality and appropriateness of sources; creative use, integration and proper citation of sources), your organization and your development of a sustained discussion as well as on grammar, writing mechanics and style.
The final paper will emerge in four stages:
a. A one-page proposal, due Friday, November 5
b. An annotated bibliography of works you plan to use, due Monday, November 15
c. An oral presentation to the class on your findings (about ten minutes long). I will assign dates and distribute a separate guide to preparing the oral presentation as the time draws closer.
d. A ten-page paper, due Friday, December 10.
Guidelines for the Proposal
The proposal should be no more than one page in length and should include a description of your proposed project, a brief statement about why the subject appeals to you and your ideas about the approach you might take and how you will go about the work, including preliminary ideas about sources.
The purpose of this bibliography is to get you to consider available resources and how they might fit together early in the research process. The bibliography should follow Chicago Style in its citation of text, and each entry should be followed by a short paragraph that is both descriptive and evaluative, explaining how this source (book, article, chapter from book) is relevant to your research and assessing its critical worth. These assignments should be written carefully and proofread for errors before they are submitted.
You should use at least five independent sources in your research; at least one must be a journal article or essay and one may be an internet source. 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. Please remember that while encyclopedias of all kinds can be invaluable starting 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 five sources). You may certainly use readings from the course syllabus as appropriate, but they do not count toward your minimum of five sources.
Your paper should be approximately ten 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 (set preferences for Arabic rather than Roman numerals) all sources from which you quote or paraphrase, as well as works to which you refer or from which you have culled information. Please follow Chicago Style format as described in Kate Turabian, A Manual for Writers or The Chicago Manual of Style. You can find most of what you need to know from this University of Wisconsin online presentation of Chicago Style at http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocChicago.html.
For citing Internet sources in a modified Chicago Style, see the following web site: http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/cite7.html.
In addition to footnotes or endnotes, your paper should also contain a select bibliography including not only those works you incorporated into your paper 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 pages of text. Again, please follow Chicago Style.
Make sure that you assign an apt title to your work! A good title helps frame the entire paper.
Please click here to review my plagiarism policy and to see a definition of plagiarism.
Papers are due at the start of class on Friday, December 10. I will deduct 3 points from the final paper grade if you arrive late to class and will deduct six points from the final paper for each day the paper is late, unless you have a valid excuse (documented illness, serious family emergency). Please note that a heavy workload in another class is not a valid excuse for lateness; you know long in advance when this paper is due and you are free to complete the work earlier if necessary.
Mugar Library has developed research guides for WR 150 students. http://www.bu.edu/library/research-guides/wr150.html.
Thematic
Martyrdom in Islamic tradition (shahada)
Holiness in Islamic tradition
Martyrdom in Jewish tradition (kiddush haShem)
The tzaddik in Jewish tradition
Saintliness in western and eastern Christianities
Heroism in the Upanishads/Bhagavad Gita
Christian martyrs in sixteenth-century Japan
Buddhist self-immolation as a form of social/political protest
Heroism in classical Greek literature
Marxist heroes of the twentieth century
Comic book heroes and New York City firefighters: heroism in modern America
The Knights Templar: Christian warriors/holy men
The concept of holy war
The Smithfield fires: Protestant martyrs in early modern England
Biographical Topics ( If you pursue a biographical topic, please realize that you must not only place the figure you study in proper historical context, but you must also make sense of your figure in the terms we've been using in this class.)
Socrates
Saints Perpetua & Felicity
Rabbi Aqiva
Al-Hallaj
St. Francis
Thomas Becket
Marguerite Porete
Patrice Lamumba
Ernesto "Che" Guevara
Galileo
Hannah Senesh (Szenes)