This is a preview of the details for the major projects that you will complete this quarter. It's just meant to inform you; there will be much more about each assignment as we get closer to it. Keep in mind that the work we do during each week leading up to these assignments will help you prepare for tackling them. Your "participation" is going to help you accomplishing these goals. You'll notice that some of the links do not work until you have actually reached the week in which we do these activities. Be sure to use the class work we do to help you complete these assignments. It is to your advantage to follow the order of the class. (i.e. Don't skip around here or get behind.) Stay with us!
Remembering and using the argument you've constructed over the last two weeks in our discussions, you're going to create a first draft of your actual thesis proposal. Are you as excited as I am?! According to the handbook, "Students will seek approval the Thesis Proposal by the fourth week of the proposal seminar." The proposal, on not more than five double-spaced typed or printed pages using appropriate grammar
and style, should include the following items:
• Statement of the proposed title
• Statement of the Thesis and scope of the study
• Rationale for pursuing the Thesis
• Tentative outline
• Discussion of available resources with a working bibliography"
This is part of your participation grade, but it is not a graded assignment. After you've had a chance to review the comments made by your peers and instructor, you'll turn it in to your faculty reader next week for their approval and conversation.
This first draft of your Thesis Proposal that your peers will read. Please do not turn in what Anne Lamott would call your "shitty" first draft. This loose writing is a useful way to begin, but it is not really meant for public viewing. Spend some time with your own red pencil figuring out how it sounds best before you turn it over for us to read. I know we would all rather spend our time figuring out ways to improve your ideas that figuring out what you mean! So, take care with your communication skills. On the Friday after this is turned in, I'll assign you a peer for you to review. Once your peers have had a chance, I'll give my own comments, too.
You will produce an evaluative Annotated Bibliography that includes 15-20 resources that you will use (or hope to use) in your thesis. [Note: Elsewhere I said "12-20", so I'll allow as few as 12. However, for most of you, 15 or more is much better! You don't want to fall behind in collecting resources.]
Make your bibliography from materials that focus on your topic. One or two general resources are acceptable for some background, but the vast majority should assist with your key research questions.
For this assignment, your annotations for each bibliography entry will evaluate the resource for its usefulness in answering or contributing to your key research questions. Make sure that each entry is written properly as a full bibliography entry in your chosen citation style. For each resource, write one or two short paragraphs under each resource that include:
The document you turn in should have your name, thesis title, and page numbers at the top right-hand corner of each page of the document.There is no page range on this assignment, but keep your bibliography between 15-20 entries and within one or two quite short paragraphs of annotation for each entry.
Good luck! And, as always, you can ask questions on the General Questions discussion board.
There is more general information about annotated bibliographies here (Links to an external site.) , but make sure you follow my instructions rather than theirs.
Your Literature Review is the longest writing assignment I ask you to create. It will help you situate your project in the context of the scholarship that already exists. More than any other part of the thesis proposal seminar, this assignment can help you determine what is at stake when you write your thesis. This is the way you determine "so what?" in an academic way and give yourself depth and breadth of knowledge in your topic like nothing else.
This literature review involves much more than just a summary of the included sources. It should take a critical, evaluative approach, showing the relationships between the various writings and how they relate to your own work. A good literature review will look at the research that has been done and synthesize or pull together those elements that are similar or most pertinent to the chosen theme/topic.
Please follow this document from The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to guide yourself through the whole literature review process. It should answer most of your questions about the actual process of writing literature reviews, but if you have any questions, please ask them on the General Questions discussion board. I'm sure if it's not clear to you, it's not clear to someone else.
Questions a literature review may answer:
For this assignment, you get to turn all of the energy you've been putting toward the background of your thesis and turn it toward the actual thesis project! Write a draft of the introduction to your thesis, no less than 2 pages, typed, double-spaced in a Times or similar 12pt font. Write clearly. Check your grammar and syntax. Edit carefully.
Include:
how this project relates to other research
the answer to the question "so what?"
Late assignments will be penalized, as this is one of the assignments your peers will review.
This assignment is due (with NO exceptions) on the final day of our class.
For this assignment, I suggest three possible ways of outlining your thesis. If there is another way you'd like to outline, please ask me as soon as possible. As long as you are rigorously showing the various layers of ideas that your thesis will express, I will probably be on board; however, you must ask for approval no later than Monday, November 6th.
However, don't reinvent the wheel if you don't want to! Here are my three options:
1) Idea Map
2) Tree Diagram
3) Linear or Topic Outline (find more information on this here.)
You can see this Writing Lab Handout that explains the three options in a slightly different way here. Here are the "Idea Map" and "Tree Diagram" pictures to which the handout refers.
For your thesis proposal itself, you have to put together a "tentative" outline. I'm sure you could use any of these options to help you with this, although you're expected to put together a more "traditional" (linear, topic) outline, not one of the more unique visual forms.
Course Rhythm
Required Texts
The only other required book is the style manual you will need for your thesis project. Choose the appropriate style guide based on the citation style you will be using. Please check with your faculty reader to determine the style you will need to use. Most theses at Iliff use Chicago Style.
Choose only ONE:
“‘Who will teach me to write?’ a reader wanted to know.
The page, the page, that eternal blankness, the blankness of eternity which you cover slowly, affirming time’s scrawl as a right and your daring as necessity; the page, which you cover woodenly, ruining it, but asserting your freedom and power to act, acknowledging that you ruin everything you touch but touching it nevertheless, because acting is better than being here in mere opacity; the page, which you cover slowly with the crabbed thread of your gut; the page in the purity of its possibilities; the page of your death, against which you pit such flawed excellences as you can muster with all your life’s strength: that page will teach you to write.”
—Annie Dillard, The Writing Life (Harper & Row, 1989)
Date | Day | Details | |
Sep 14, 2018 | Fri | Proposal Samples to Review | due by 05:59AM |
Sep 14, 2018 | Fri | Concise Introductions (Profile) | due by 05:59AM |
Sep 14, 2018 | Fri | Your Faculty Reader | due by 05:59AM |
Sep 17, 2018 | Mon | Appointment with Your Faculty Reader | due by 05:59AM |
Sep 17, 2018 | Mon | Exercise 3.3 from The Craft of Research | due by 05:59AM |
Sep 17, 2018 | Mon | Exercise 3.4 from The Craft of Research | due by 05:59AM |
Sep 21, 2018 | Fri | Familiarize Yourself with the Iliff's Primo Library System and find your LC Search Terms | due by 05:59AM |
Sep 21, 2018 | Fri | Key Research Questions | due by 05:59AM |
Sep 24, 2018 | Mon | Provisional Research Idea to One Sentence Research Problem | due by 05:59AM |
Sep 24, 2018 | Mon | Develop Your Writing Schedule and Goals | due by 05:59AM |
Sep 28, 2018 | Fri | Optional Exercise: Familiarize Yourself with Your Citation Manual | due by 05:59AM |
Sep 28, 2018 | Fri | Thesis Proposal First Draft | due by 05:59AM |
Oct 01, 2018 | Mon | Learning Agreement | due by 05:59AM |
Oct 01, 2018 | Mon | Peer Review of Thesis Proposal Draft | due by 05:59AM |
Oct 05, 2018 | Fri | Database Review | due by 05:59AM |
Oct 08, 2018 | Mon | Interactive Reading | due by 05:59AM |
Oct 12, 2018 | Fri | Mining Texts for More Texts | due by 05:59AM |
Oct 15, 2018 | Mon | Annotated Bibliography | due by 05:59AM |
Oct 22, 2018 | Mon | Advance your Argument | due by 05:59AM |
Oct 29, 2018 | Mon | Literature Review | due by 05:59AM |
Nov 02, 2018 | Fri | Find a Model Introduction | due by 05:59AM |
Nov 05, 2018 | Mon | Introduction to your Thesis | due by 06:59AM |
Nov 09, 2018 | Fri | Peer Review of Introductions | due by 06:59AM |
Nov 12, 2018 | Mon | Writing Practices | due by 06:59AM |
Nov 17, 2018 | Sat | Full Outline of your Thesis | due by 06:59AM |