SUNY Fredonia
College of Arts and Humanities
ENGL 208/AMST 210: American Popular and Mass Cultures
Fall 2009
Section 1: M 8-8:50, Fenton 176
Office: Fenton 265; M 11-12, TTh 9-12, 3-5, F 11-12, 3-5, and by appointment; 673-3856
E-mail: simon@fredonia.edu, brucesimon18@yahoo.com
Web Page: www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/
ANGEL Space: https://fredonia.sln.suny.edu/default.asp

Final Research Project

This page takes on three important questions about the Final Research Project: what, what for, and how to. 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

The Final Research Project is your chance to propose, research, present on, and write on a topic of your choice that connects the course and your primary academic or intellectual interests in a format of your choice. You may choose to write a critical or a pedagogical essay, or do a creative or a web authoring project. Or you may propose a different format and see if you can get it approved. Whatever format you choose, you must select and use at least one of the required readings from the course and at least one of the critical studies from the course bibliography, and find and use at least two additional print secondary sources, in addition to whatever additional non-print research you want to do. And you must post a proposal on the course ANGEL group's discussion board by the end of November and follow up with a presentation in one of the classes after Thanksgiving break. Your goal here is to decide how you want to enter into existing critical, industry, and/or fan conversations on an issue relating to a genre or medium that is part of American popular and mass cultures--and influence their future course and follow through on your agenda in your research and writing. The standard template is to choose a recent film that adapts/responds to an original source from another medium (like fantasy or science fiction stories or novels, comic books, video games, or television--but not limited to them) and use comparison/contrast and other methods to analyze what's at stake in the adaptation/response, particularly what it reveals about American culture or society, usually in the form of a thesis-driven persuasive essay. But don't limit yourself to the standard template if you have an idea you're committed to.

Here's more on the suggested formats for the Final Research Project:

• Critical Essay format: write a critical essay of 9 to 12 pages in which you make a case for what's at stake in the migration of a work across genres or media, using your research to help you support and justify your position. The goal of this option is for you to hone your analytical and persuasive skills by entering into an interpretive dialogue with other readers/critics of the work/genres/media you have chosen to analyze.
• Pedagogical Essay format: write a pedagogical essay of 9 to 12 pages on how you'd organize a mini-unit devoted to the migration of works across genres and media and on your reasons for teaching them in the way you described, drawing on your research to help you develop, support, and justify your teaching plan. The goal of this option is to make a case for the best way of teaching a set of works from the course at the upper middle school or high school level. Your essay, in other words, should not simply describe what you want to do with your class; it should explain why and justify your choices. Your essay, that is, should explain and justify your goals, methods, and modes of assessment--it should make a case for why it's important to teach students the material, concepts, and other things that you want them to learn, for why the teaching strategies you plan to use will help you achieve your goals, and for why the assessment methods you have chosen will enable you to tell to what degree students have met your goals.
• Creative format: write a story, play, series of poems, personal essay or work in a nontextual medium that is in significant intertextual (or intermedial) dialogue with a work that has migrated across genres and media, along with an author's note of at least three pages detailing the critical issues you are addressing in it and the process that went into your composition of it. The goal of this option is to produce a creative work of your own and analyze its relation to works, genres, and media in the course. By entering into an intertextual/intermedial dialogue with other writers/artists--by relating your work to theirs using any of the modes and devices of creative writing, visual arts, music, film, or other genres/media--you will be able to get across your "take" on the other work and its migrations across genres and media, on the critical issues they engage, and the narrative/poetic/dramatic/visual/aural strategies they enact.
• Web Authoring format: create an original web site or blog devoted to a specific aspect of a work's migration across genres and media that hasn't been treated well on the web (see the links page for an introduction to what's out there, and to help you figure out what needs to be done), which includes an essay of at least three pages detailing the critical issues you are addressing and the process that went into your construction of it, along with a bibliography of all your sources (both electronic and print). The goal of this option is for you to go beyond the usual moves (providing biographical and bibliographical information on an author, selecting quality links for further information) to fill a need/niche that is unfilled or undeveloped or not yet well done on the internet. The big idea in this format is to allow you to combine aspects of the previous three formats or choose one of them and bring your work in them/it to a (potentially much) wider audience.

What For

So far this semester you've already done a good deal of writing--ranging from the informal free writing on specific topics in class to the more open-ended and varied interactions on the ANGEL discussion board to writing writing blog posts and a book review. What the Final Research Project allows you to do is to pull together all the skills you've developed in these smaller assignments and move through the entire research and writing process: from considering what works, genres, media, and questions on them interest you the most, to identifying a research topic or inquiry, to developing your own perspective on that topic or question though critical reading of primary and secondary texts, to conveying your perspective in the form you feel would best showcase your research and critical or creative skills. Moving from proposal to presentation to final product allows you to experience all the stages of the research process, get feedback from your peers as well as from me at each of these stages, and consider what you might do with your project after it's complete. Rather than a final exam that I create to test your understanding of the genres, media, and methodologies we studied this semester, doing a final project in these stages allows you to show me what you've learned this semester and to focus in on what interests you most and what you find to be most revealing about American popular and mass cultures. Not only should the results be better and more interesting pedagogically, going through these stages should prepare you to approach American popular and mass cultures that you engage after you leave the course more critically and more creatively--and put you in a position to contribute to the emerging fields we studied this semester.

How To

The first stage of the Final Research Project is to write a proposal and get it approved. In it, you address the what, how, and why questions every reader of a proposal is interested in: you must propose a topic and format for your project, describe specifically what you want to focus on, explain your interest in the subject, justify making it the focus of the final project, briefly lay out your research plans, and provide a bibliography of works you've already consulted in developing the proposal. In short, you must try to persuade your audience (in this case, me) that what you want to do is worth doing. As with any proposal, your job is to pique your readers' interest and get them excited about seeing the results of your research and analysis. Often, this involves laying out a key question, explaining its significance, and suggesting how your approach to answering it will improve on existing approaches. This proposal should be posted on the ANGEL discussion board by the end of November, although you are encouraged to post it as early in the month as you can. I strongly suggest you email or meet with me before you turn in your proposal, as soon as you even have a possible candidate for a final project format/topic/question. That way the email feedback I give you on your proposal (through both ANGEL mail and regular email) won't come out of the blue but instead will be part of our ongoing consultation process.

The next stage is to build on your preliminary research on your topic. Your research should begin before you turn in your proposal--a good proposal is the result of a good amount of research into what precise question to ask, who else has asked it, how they have attempted to answer it, what their answers have been, and why you are dissatisfied with any single answer. So it's not like this is a stage that happens after you've turned in your proposal and we've talked it over; it overlaps the proposal drafting stage. You should use the resources on the course ANGEL site and in the Reed library databases to help you accomplish this research. Learn how to use the interlibrary loan system and how to take advantage of advice from your professors and reference librarians. A lot of what we talk about in discussing your proposal will be research-related.

As you're doing these things, you'll be giving an oral presentation on your topic in one of our class sessions after Thanksgiving break. For those going relatively soon after the break, your presentation is likely to be an update of your proposal, filling in the blanks, clarifying any ambiguities, and turning uncertainties into decisions. For those going in the middle, it might turn into more of a progress report on your research or exploration of how your topic has changed since you first conceived of it. For those going toward the end of the semester, it might turn into more of a preview of the final draft. Whenever you go, though, you should tailor your presentation to get you the feedback you find most useful to the progress of your project. As opposed to the discussion board, where only some students will read and respond to your proposal, the presentation is your chance to fill the entire class in on your project and seek feedback/suggestions/criticisms from them (or at least those in attendance that day!). What is most important to convey about your project at the time you are going? What is the most useful feedback you could get from your peers? These are the questions you should be considering as you plan your presentation. I suggest giving yourself 5-7 minutes to do your presentation and the class 3-5 minutes to respond to it.

The final stage is to use your research and the feedback you have gotten on your proposal and presentation to help you draft, revise, edit, and hone your final project itself. Again, this can be an ongoing process--you shouldn't wait until your research is complete to begin drafting your project; if you think of your research and writing as going on parallel tracks and you going back and forth between them, it'll help you use your research to inform your writing and your writing to suggest new research inquiries. I'll be happy to discuss any stage of the writing process with you--from brainstorming to organizing your thoughts, from drafting to revising, from editing to proofreading--at any time in December.

So here's the assignment sheet for the Final Research Project.

Due: no later than 11:30 pm on Friday, 18 December 2009, in the FRP dropbox in the "Lessons" area on the course ANGEL site.

Format: word-processed; meeting page/word count minima laid out above in a double spaced document with reasonable fonts, font sizes, and margins; a heading that includes your name, the course name or number, and the date; a title that alludes to main themes of the project; formatting, bibliography, and citations (the latter two of which should appear only in the author's note if you are doing the creative format) in MLA style (see the links page for explanations and examples; the basic template is: Author. "Title of Poem, or Essay, or Story." Title of Book from which It Comes. Ed., Editor of Book [if any]. City of Publication: Publisher, Date of Publication. Page Numbers.); proper quotation format in body of paper according to MLA style (typically author's last name and page number in parentheses in body of paper--"..." (Du Bois 17).--and blockquote format for quotations five lines or longer).

Audience: In general, think of your immediate audience as someone who may be interested in the core issues of the course but who has not been taking this class; hence, you can't assume that your readers have read the texts you're writing on, so you have to include the kind of background that someone not taking this course would need.

Grading Criteria: Dependent on the format you've chosen, as follows:

• Critical Essay format: I will be grading this essay in terms of how well you make your case for your argument, how well you base your argument on research, analysis, and interpretation, and how well-organized and well-written your paper is. Hence I will be evaluating the coherence, validity, and persuasiveness of your paper's argument, the effectiveness of your paper's structure, and the quality of your paper's prose (diction, grammar, syntax, punctuation, and formatting).
• Pedagogical Essay format: I will be grading this essay in terms of the quality of the lesson plan itself, how well you make your case for your pedagogical goals and strategies, and how well-organized and well-written your essay is (including diction, grammar, syntax, punctuation, and formatting).
• Creative format: I will be grading your project on the quality of the creative work and of the author's note, the inventiveness with which your work engages the work, genres, media, and critical issues it is responding to, and the quality of your writing (including diction, grammar, syntax, punctuation, and formatting).
• Web Authoring format: I will be grading your web site on the quality of its content and design, on the originality and thoughtfulness of your approach to the topic you have focused on, and on the quality of your writing (including diction, grammar, syntax, punctuation, and formatting).

ENGL 208/AMST 210: American Popular and Mass Cultures, Fall 2009
Created: 11/30/09 10:02 pm
Last modified: 11/30/09 10:02 pm
Webmaster: Bruce Simon, Associate Professor of English, SUNY Fredonia