Your assignment is to write a proposal for the research essay that you will complete during the Winter Quarter. You will do so in incremental steps, described below. Your proposal, when completed, should do two essential things. First, it should provide a detailed description of your research project. Second, it should explain why your project is significant. Here are some specific suggestions for what to include in your proposal:
1) The proposal should outline the question, topic, or issue that you are investigating. Please make sure that you clarify the boundaries--chronological, thematic, or otherwise--of your study. Also explain why you made important choices about what to include or to leave out, why you decided, say, to close your study in 1969, rather than 1965 or 1972.
2) What are the major questions or issues that you will investigate, or what are the main ideas that you intend to develop? In your proposal, you may focus more on the former than the latter, as you may not yet have done sufficient work even to sketch your main lines of analysis. But you shouldn’t hesitate to advance preliminary arguments. Every historian modifies her/his thoughts as his/her research and writing progresses. You are not required to make an argument in February just because you thought it might work in November.
3) Explain why your project is something worth doing. The familiar argument that your study is significant because it’s never been done before is not, by itself, sufficient. Some studies that have never been done probably never should be done. So you need to do more--to explain what your study will add to existing secondary literature about your subject or how you’ve raised new and important questions that are worthy of analysis.
4) You should review the scholarly work on your subject and show how your study will relate to that work. Are you adding to a particular body of scholarship and, if so, in what ways? Are you challenging a particular interpretation or school or thought?
5) Discuss whether your study involves a distinctive approach, methodology, design, or other feature. Does your study provide a new or fresh perspective because of your approach?
6) What are the major sources for your essay? You should discuss both secondary works--those studies by other scholars--as well as primary sources, such as contemporary documents, memoirs, or oral histories. Many primary materials are available in print, in microform editions, or online. Others can be used only in archives or research libraries. You should discuss the sources that are most important for your study, and you should list them in a bibliography at the end of your proposal. In the bibliography, please include two sections, one for primary sources, the other for secondary works.
7) Please include anything else in your proposal that you think will help a reader understand your project or its significance.
Your proposal should be approximately 6-9 pages, printed and double-spaced, plus bibliography.
We will discuss each of the research proposals at our last seminar meeting on November 16. So that everybody has a chance to read your proposal carefully prior to that final class, please email a copy of your proposal to me by noon on November 12. My email address is: My email address is: pach@ohio.edu. I will circulate the draft proposals by email so that everybody can read them before our last meeting of the quarter. After the discussion on November 16, you’ll have a week to revise your proposal. The final version of the proposal will be due on November 23.
Two Incremental Steps
The first incremental step in writing your proposal will be to submit a preliminary description of your topic and a brief explanation of its significance or importance on October 16. This preliminary description should be approximately 2-3 pages long. Much less important than length is content. The preliminary description should explain your topic as clearly and precisely as possible and offer the strongest justification for its being a project worth doing. To write this preliminary description, you will have to do a good deal of thinking and reading. You should consult with me about your topic well in advance of writing your preliminary description. Even if you have only a very tentative idea of a subject, area, or topic, consultation can help in pointing you in the right direction. So please get in touch with me early in the quarter about the topic of your essay. We can discuss it, as appropriate, by email or in person. As you define your topic, you should also do some preliminary reading so that you are aware of what’s already been written and any significant interpretive debates. You should email your preliminary description to me any time on October 16. A preliminary description is just that. You may alter your topic--perhaps in significant ways--between the time that you submit this description and the time you finish the proposal for your essay at the end of the Fall Quarter.
The next incremental step is the construction of a working bibliography. You should become familiar with important primary sources--published, archival, or online--that you intend to utilize in writing your essay. You should also become familiar with significant secondary works, including books and articles, relevant to your topic. You may not read them thoroughly at this point, but you should be sufficiently familiar with them so that you are aware of their approach, argument, scope, or other distinctive features. You should choose the two or three most important primary sources and a half dozen of the most important secondary works and write a brief paragraph about each in which you critically appraise them and summarize, as appropriate, their significance to your project. Please email this annotated bibliography to me any time on October 30. Again, we can consult as necessary prior to that date about any items that you should include in the bibliography.
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