Starting Research

Planning a Research Project

·       Guiding Research Question à inspired by essay prompt’s question(s), but that is more specific and allows you to analyze a specific aspect of subject

o   From American culture (what is “culture”?), what do you want to focus on that is one aspect that makes up culture? Some examples:

§  Views of mental health & family; mental illness; disability

§  Class & economics

§  Racism

§  Appropriation of Language

§  Educationà educational opportunity; education & class; education & gender

§  Christianity

§  Social Networks

§  Pop Culture/Media and impact on society

§  Privilege

o   Break down the prompt’s language to help clarify purpose: What is “social commentary”?

·       Pre-Writing Strategies: Brainstorming Terms for a “Research Word Bank”

o   What are some of the words that come to mind in thinking about the subject matter?

o   What are some other words come to mind when you think of “culture” or “society” or more? 

Finding Sources

·       Start library search for texts with the key words from Word Bank à literary criticism databases, sociology databases; ethnic/gender studies databases; documentary films

o   Record vital information of sources found on databases à

o   Eating a text à skimming a text for cues of relevance to your research project

o   Actively Read your sources: annotate, pose questions, write down main ideas, other authors cited

o   What types of sources to go for in academic research? (Guide to research sources)

o   COLLECT NEW TERMS from indexes, T o C’s, and from the texts themselves…

Analytical Insight

·       A bulk of your Research Essay should be you a FOCUSED ANALYSIS of a major social commentary theme in the poet’s collection, including how they use poetic techniques to engage in that subject matter

·       Use found articles to further research questions and answers. Look for the many types of claims – about culture, about contemporary poetics, about your author’s work!

o   Example: “A Machine Ate My Language” by Carmen Gimenez Smith

§  “contemporary vanguard poetry”

§  “In my poetry I attempt to disturb the surface of the canonical affect with my race and gender (inevitably and more often than not tied to class) through the signals that popular culture make of me.”

§  “the diction of resistance”

§  “the material culture that a hyper-capitalist culture”

Research Proposal Further Considerations:

Introductions

• Identifying the subject (author and book) and subject matter (what themes are relevant in their work).
• What is your GRQ? Why do you want to study this poet and this book of poems? 

Prior Knowledge & Making Sure You Cite with Summary and Paraphrasing

Whether you have or haven’t used summary or paraphrasing, you are to revise your prior knowledge paragraph with cited sources. To get better at integrating sources without quoting, use today’s class to experiment with summary and paraphrase.

• Make sure you boil down the articles related to your essay subject into 1-3 sentences of pertinent info. Don’t let your summary of an entire article be over three sentences in your proposal.
• Accuracy is key to not getting long-winded and going into too much detail on sources. If you can really understand the article thesis statement, you can rephrase that into your proposal and focus on how that author’s thesis connects to your GRQ…

Last Paragraph of Proposal: Significance of Research àthe “Why” others should care about the findings

• More than likely, you could say more about why anyone should care about your research. However, this part of a proposal is extremely important to your research. You have to explain what the value of your project is!
• What are reasons your research will help others, not just you?  Be a bit risky and creative in explaining the importance of what you hope to find. Also, be practical in thinking about what happens to people when we don’t know or don’t think about the subject.
• Example reasoning:  “With Native American tribes being the original people to this land, Americans must not ignore the negative impacts the US government and white culture has had, intentionally or not. Christians who are afraid of Muslims attacking America should be able to understand the mindset of a Native American, whose life was terrorized by European men. Furthermore, anyone who has seen a movie like Independence Day where aliens come to take over Earth should be interested in learning about how an indigenous writer views history from that position of defense.”