On the Research Project

What It Is

As you know, your six-to-ten-page research project should focus either on a contemporary US migration or on a migration in your family history. In it, you may (a) write a fiction of your own based on some aspect of migration in your family or community history--or on a contemporary US migration--that is in intertextual relationship (thematically, structurally, stylistically) with at least one of the assigned texts, (b) retell and analyze the meaning and significance of a story about migration often shared among your family members or told of a contemporary US migration, using the literature, history, and criticism we've read to help you make sense of it, (c) do research on a specific migrant in your family or community, the period in which he/she migrated, and the places he/she migrated from and to, and contextualize his/her migration in terms of the reasons for emigration, the experience of being an immigrant in America, or the legacy of that migration for your family or community; or (d) develop a topic of your own choice (with my approval).

My goal is to make this page as useful to you as possible, so let me know if it can be improved. If anything is badly worded, unclear, or missing, please contact me with constructive criticisms. Thanks.

What For

There are several purposes and goals behind my assigning the research project:

• Since I believe that general education courses should give you the opportunity to connect the subject matter and modes of analysis in the course to your own lives and people/issues close to you, I have chosen to give you this option rather than simply assign a longer essay in literary analysis than the analytical essay.
• Since this course is about the relation between past and present, and between individual lives and large-scale historical processes, I want you to apply to yourself and your family or community the kinds of analyses writers whose works we are reading are applying to themselves and their characters. So as you're reading the literary works in this course, be thinking of them as possible models for your own exploration of the legacies of migration among those close to you.
• Since this course is about reading actively and carefully, I want you to apply some of the lessons you've learned over the course of the semester to the acts of listening and researching by probing into your own family's or community's past and drawing out a story of a migration from a living relative or community member or from genealogical documents. Those who are interested in a career as an historian, anthropologist, sociologist, social worker, or journalist will find this segment of this option particularly relevant.
• Since this course is about modes of comparative analysis, I want you to apply what you've learned about comparing and contrasting literary texts from outside the United States to the act of comparing/contrasting an actual American migration narrative that you are connected to personally (either by family tie, friendship, or simply proximity) with a fictional non-U.S. migration narrative or narratives.
• Finally, since all the other assignments in the course reward steady, consistent work and the ability to connect what you're reading with what you write about, this project continues the anti-cramming ethic behind the assignments in this course.

How To

Your task in the project is to find interesting connections between actual migrations in your family or community history and relevant issues, themes, situations, or characters in the works we've been reading, on the one hand, and to reflect (either explicitly in an experimental essay or implicitly in the form of your story) on the significance of those connections, on the other. Your project should be making a point (how indirectly or directly it does this is up to you) about how the connections (whether direct or subtle) between what you've been reading in the course and what you've been finding out about migrations in your family or community have made you see your family/community history differently. One way to approach this task is to consider some of the key topics and issues in the course, to see if any relate to your own family history in a way you want to pursue further. Please see me if you want further advice on choosing an option and/or topic on this project, or e-mail me with your thoughts on possibilities for this project.

Assignment Sheet

Due: A progress report on the project is due before you leave for spring break (see "Process," below). The completed project is due no later than 5 pm on Monday, April 15, 2002, in my mailbox in the English Department main office (277 Fenton) or in the envelope outside my office door (240 Fenton). If you choose the web authoring option, your site must be up and running by that same day, and you must notify me over email of its URL (web address) before 5 pm. People who are interested in the web authoring option must make an appointment to see me before spring break. You are also required to report periodically on your progress on the project (see "process" below).

Format: The standard formatting for your previous essays holds: double spaced, with reasonable fonts, font sizes, and margins; title that indicates main argument of paper; heading that includes your name, the course name or number, and the date; bibliography and citations in MLA style (see links page for explanations of this style of citation); proper quotation format--"..." (12). for quotations within a paragraph; blockquote format for quotes five lines or longer. Page length is flexible in the sense that you can go past the tenth page if you so desire; six pages, however, is a firm minimum. Each option has slightly different format requirements: for option (a), your story must be preceded or followed by a brief author's note in which you discuss your goals for the story and its relation to works we've read in the course; for option (b), your analysis of an often-repeated migration narrative in your family or community can precede, follow, or be intertwined with your retelling of that story; for option (c), the structure of this experimental essay is similarly flexible, but should strive to retell, contextualize, and relate the migrant's story you have chosen to focus on. For each of these options, then, you can draw on many of the techniques the writers in this course have themselves pioneered or adapted. In fact, you may choose to present this project as a web site rather than a story or experimental essay; web authoring offers opportunities to play with form, structure, and design that simply are not available in print. It is possible to scan and upload photographs, as well as audio and video clips, onto a web site, and to structure your story or essay in unconventional ways (through the design of the web site, for instance). No matter what medium or structure your project eventually takes, I will be able to provide technical and conceptual help, but I will expect you to put a lot of thought into what kind of reading experience you want this project to be for your audience (the class).

Grading Criteria: The grading criteria depend on which option you've chosen. For option (a), the key criteria are the effectiveness of your narrative techniques and strategies in creating a reading experience that leads readers to consider issues and topics you feel are crucial to your migration narrative; the effectiveness of your author's note in explaining your goals and comparing your techniques/strategies to other writers' migration narratives; and the overall quality of writing in the story and author's note. For option (b), the key criteria are the quality of your recounting and analysis of the often-repeated migration narrative; the effectiveness with which the structure of the experimental essay or web site helps tie the project together and helps convey your ideas; and the quality of writing in the experimental essay or web site. For option (c), the key criteria are quality of the connections you draw between what you've found out about your family's or community's migration history and what we've been reading, thinking, talking, and writing about in the course; the effectiveness with which the structure of the experimental essay or web site helps tie the project together and helps convey your connections; and the quality of writing in the experimental essay or web site.

Process: As stated above, you must report your progress on this project to me before spring break. By March 21, 2002, that is, you must write a progress report in which you discuss possible sources of migration narratives in your family (or community if you feel the family avenue isn't promising), some issues you feel might arise in tracking them down, and the preliminary research you have done to help you focus and develop your project. Your goal should be to show me evidence that you have thought carefully about what doing the project well entails, and have taken some first steps toward identifying a focus for your project and researching it.

In thinking about what you're going to write me, you might consider the following questions: Do you know any relatives who migrated from one part of the country to the other or emigrated from another country--or who know someone who did? Is there a person in your family who got interested in genealogy and already did some detective work on your family history? If it's going to be difficult to get access to your family history, why do you think this is so? (Not just the conditions that would make it difficult, but possible reasons behind those obstacles existing in the first place.) What do you need to know about the time and place on which you're writing to develop your essay or story effectively? What research have you done to answer this question, and what can you foresee doing?

To see examples of student projects from the Fall 2000 semester of my Novels and Tales (ENGL 209) course, click here; to see examples of student projects from the Fall 2001 semester of my Novels and Tales (ENGL 209) course, click here.

HON 203/208/228: American Migration Narratives, Spring 2002
Created: 2/26/02 4:27 pm
Last modified: 4/11/02 9:14 am