Your paper or project is meant to be a development of your Research Question (RQ) and Annotated Bibliography exercise. By the time you come to write your major paper or project, you will have had several conversations with me and the benefit of my feedback on the RQ.
If your RQ paragraph is well developed, you may be able to use that paragraph in the introduction to your paper/project. Generally, your introductory paragraph(s) will set out your research question/problem/puzzle, approach (also known as methodology), and answering thesis. (You’ll observe this pattern in most good scholarly articles. Note that the guiding questions are not necessary posed as interrogatives, but there’s always an implied interrogative.)
If you need to rethink your project on the basis of my feedback, then let’s meet again to make sure that you are developing a manageable project.
Aim for about 4000-5000 words. This length is long enough for you to develop the main moves of a significant argument, but short enough that you can expand and develop your work into a journal article or a 598 project.
All projects must be prepared in MLA style (parenthetical references with a Works Cited list, and explanatory notes for observations and critical overviews that would interrupt the argument) or Chicago style (endnotes for all citations and observations).
Janelle Jenstad 