Final Project Proposal (5% of final grade)

Due

  • Friday, March 14 by the end of the day

Requirements

  • 2-3 paragraphs, not including Works Cited or Bibliography.
  • MLA or Chicago citation style.
  • Turn in via Canvas; doc, docx, or pdf.
  • If you use AI writing or research tools for any part of the writing process, a statement about how you used these tools and why. See the “Course Info & Policies” page under “Academic Integrity and AI Writing Tools” for more information about what this statement should look like.

Please see the final research paper assignment page for a description of its requirements.

Your proposal should include:

  • 1-2 sentence central research question. Your central research question should name the primary text(s) you will be writing about and pose the central question (or series of related questions) that your final research paper will seek to answer. If you are expanding on your reception analysis in writing your final paper, this central research question should represent an expansion, revision, or reworking of the question(s) you explored in that assignment. Your primary text(s) may be a work (or works) of literature, social media posts, or both.
  • 2-3 paragraph abstract of your essay that clearly articulates your topic, the text(s) you will write about, and what you think (at this point) your argument in your final research paper will be.
  • Citations of and links to at least 3 scholarly articles or book chapters, at least two of which were published in the past ~15 years, about your selected primary text(s) and/or topic. If these sources include single-author academic books, please indicate for each book which specific chapter(s) you have/will read for your essay. Please make sure to include links to each scholarly source (either to the record in the library catalog or to the journal article or book itself).

Formulating Your Central Research Question

Your central research question(s) will guide your investigation of your selected literary text(s) and/or topic. This question should be broad enough that you can spend 18-20 pages answering it, but specific enough that it provides you with some concrete direction for your research and writing.

Some examples of central research questions (that I’ve made up):

  • How do readers talk about Colleen Hoover’s romance novels on BookTok and what do these discussions tell us about the status/importance/relevance/etc of the contemporary romance genre?
  • How does X author’s social media presence recast received ideas about authorship in the 21st century?
  • What is the importance of the review (on Amazon, on social media, etc.) in contemporary publishing?

Writing Your Abstract

Your abstract should describe the topic of your final research paper, it should name the text(s) you will be writing about, and it should articulate, as clearly as possible, what you think your argument (at this point) will be. Your argument will most likely change as you learn more about your topic and start writing. This is expected; your abstract represents a preliminary attempt to articulate your argument. You can change your mind.

You may find this resource from The Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison useful when writing your abstract: https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/assignments/writing-an-abstract-for-your-research-paper/. Not all of the criteria listed under “The Contents of an Abstract” section will apply for this assignment, but you might find the sample humanities abstract they provide on this page (“Sample Abstract 2”) helpful as you write your own.

Conducting Research

You will need to be able to find and access scholarly sources about your topic and text(s) to complete this assignment. See the “Conducting Research” section of the Final Research Paper assignment page for resources.