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As academic scholars, we engage in research that goes beyond merely reporting research findings. Our research adds to larger conversations by going beyond just reiterating what others have said (or what most already know) and by adding new "voices" to the conversation.

For your major paper of the semester, then, you are going to focus on a topic of your choice related to information from your common read and explore it as academic scholars.

40% grade, five weeks.

Your research essay should, then:

Be appropriate for an audience of your peers at NCTC.
Focus on an topic related to our common read by Mesler and Vedantam, UD using 1- 3 chapters, but do not use his words in your thesis.
Be unified around a research question rather than simply reporting on several different aspects of a topic.
Be “original” in that it attempts to wrestle with a topic that has not already been rehashed again and again in print.
And, be “research,” which may mean textual studies, library sources, historical sources, or media sources.

We will break up writing this paper into several parts to make it more manageable and to encourage you to engage in the writing process as a method of inquiry. Therefore, you will first need to start thinking about a topic. Then, we'll move into locating and evaluating sources, drafting our rough draft and constructing a thesis statement, revising, editing, and submitting.

Also:

Your paper will be 8 full pages. (This doesn't include the works cited, abstract, or title/cover page.)
Include 5-7 sources, use primary text and the remainder should be secondary sources, half of which should be scholarly.
Your paper should utilize MLA documentation.
Cannot reuse material from the group project or previous essays.