What

The research paper is your chance to analyze the meaning, significance, and stakes of an American literary haunting or hauntings of your choice in a 7-to-10-page research-based, thesis-driven essay. It is due on July 25 and should be a Word or rich text format document that is double spaced, with reasonable fonts, font sizes, and margins; a title that indicates the main argument of paper; a heading that includes your name, the course name, and the date; and a bibliography and citations in MLA style. It should be turned in electronically, in the dropbox in the Final Project folder in the Content area of the course ANGEL space.

How

As wefve been discussing in class the last few weeks, the challenges involved with choosing your own topic for this or any research paper include planning, researching, and brainstorming (narrowing the scope, finding a focus, generating a research question, investigating other peoplefs answers to it, trying to improve on the best answers) and drafting, revising, and editing (figuring out the most persuasive and economical way to develop and support your answer, examining your draft from the perspective of a first-time reader and asking gwhy?h and gso what?h of every claim and paragraph, and polishing and proofreading your prose). Your work-in-progress presentation and research to date should help you with the former set of challenges, but of course I can offer you aid and advice at every stage of this process, especially the research and writing. In addition, many of the recommended readings in the course ANGEL space can help you, by providing arguments to respond to, sources to use, and writing strategies and structures to learn from, use, and modify. So please keep me informed of major developments in the project by email (using my brucesimon18@yahoo.com account is best). Ifm happy to make an appointment to meet in my office or on the Hakozaki campus at your convenience.

Why

In my experience as a teacher, Ifve found that students learn more and do better when they have chosen a research topic, focus, and question that they are truly interested in, particularly for a final project in a course. Rather than a final exam, which tends to penalize you for what you havenft learned (or canft remember), a student-directed research paper allows you to show me what you have learned in the course. It gives you a chance to learn what it takes and how it feels to begin to become an expert on a specific subject and texts. The skills you learn and practice in this project should be transferable to other academic and non-academic arenas.

How Graded

Papers will be graded on the quality of the analysis of the American literary haunting (as evidenced in your main argument, supporting arguments and evidence, and the research you have done that helps you do these things) and the quality of your writing (persuasiveness, organization, sentence-level prose, command of the conventions of college writing on literature).

Haunting America, Kyushu University, Spring 2007
Created: 7/17/07 7:25 am
Last modified: 7/17/07 7:42 am
Webmaster: Bruce Simon, Fulbright Visiting Lecturer in American Studies, Kyushu University, Seinan Gakuin University, and Fukuoka University; Associate Professor of English, SUNY Fredonia