rough draft

Philosophy 253 Semester Paper Instructions

For this course, you are required to produce an original research paper at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Your overall paper must adhere to the following guidelines:

• 2500 words, although you may exceed this word limit. • For each draft, include a works cited page and in-text citations in MLA format. • All pages must be numbered. • Print on only one side of the page, if possible. • Staple the paper. • Include a title page with your name, title of your paper, the date, and my name.

To make this project more manageable, it will be due in 6 stages throughout the course of the semester:

• Overview of the literature related to your topic. • Ideas and sources you will use for your rough draft. • Rough draft, including self-evaluation letter. • Peer-review workshop, including responses to classmates’ self-evaluation letters. • Presentation on your paper topic. • Revision assignment. • Final draft of your paper.

Each of these stages is explained in more detail in the following sections.

Overview of the literature related to your topic

While research aggregators like ProQuest are convenient for quickly finding sources related to a topic, they can also obscure the often very different approaches disciplines take to the “same” subject. To better understand these differences, you are required to produce an overview of the literature related to your topic drawn from three distinct disciplinary databases:

• The Philosopher’s Index, available at University Libraries: Articles & Databases: Philosophy & Religion

• The MLA International Bibliography, available at University Libraries: Articles & Databases: Literature and Language

• One additional database of your choice. I suggest browsing Articles & Databases by Subject to pick one that seems relevant to your project.

In each database, you are required to:

• Search for your topic — for example, “Harry Potter”. • Write down the number of articles that your search returns. • Take notes on any trends that you see in the article titles and abstracts — for

example, you may notice that half of the articles in a specific database reference a particular theorist or theory (like Marx or Marxism); specific novels within the Harry Potter universe; specific themes the novels contain (like race, gender, economic status); etc.

• Take notes on any trends that you do not see in the article titles and abstracts — for example, is a particular novel ignored? does no article reference a theory or theorist with which you are familiar? does no article discuss a specific theme that the novels contain? etc.

Once you have gathered this information, you are required to distill it into an ~750 word double-spaced summary that contains the following 4 paragraphs:

• One paragraph summarizing your findings in The Philosopher’s Index. • A second paragraph summarizing your findings in The MLA International

Bibliography. • A third paragraph summarizing your findings in the additional database you chose. • A final paragraph drawing conclusions for your own research — for example, based

on what you have discovered so far, what “still needs to be done” with respect to your topic? what approaches can you “borrow” from existing literature? what theories, topics, etc. do you need to learn more about? what’s next for your own project?

Please keep the following points in mind while working on your overview:

• You are not required to incorporate this analysis into subsequent stages of your paper — you can change course at any time.

• You do not need to read the actual articles (yet), just the titles and abstracts. • You may need to fine-tune your search parameters based on your results — for

example, “British literature” may return way too many hits to be useful, but “cover art in Harry Potter novels” may return too few.

• You do not need an introduction or a conclusion for your overview, just 4 paragraphs of analysis.

Ideas and sources you will use for your rough draft

Once you have a general overview of existing literature on your topic, you can begin to structure your own research. To give this structure a concrete shape, you are required to submit a 3-page overview of your proposed project that includes:

• a 1-page discussion of what your paper will do — what ideas will your paper explore, how will it explore those ideas, and why are they import ideas to investigate? In other words, you must make an argument for how your project has emerged from the ideas and questions you have chosen. Make sure to include a series of research questions that your paper will think through.

• a 1-page discussion of primary sources you will use. List at least 3 primary sources — for example, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Martin Heidegger’s “What Are Poets For?,” and Kant’s Critique of Judgment. In other words, what are the major objects your paper will explore? Please explain how you have chosen those sources, how you will use them in your paper, and what evidence they will provide.

• a 1-page discussion of secondary sources you will use. List at least 3 secondary sources, ones that comment on the primary sources that you have already listed. Explain how you’ve chosen these sources, how you will use them in your paper, and how these sources will help you to talk about your ideas.

Please keep the following points in mind when working on this stage of your paper:

• You are not required to incorporate this analysis into subsequent stages of your paper — you can change course at any time.

• You need to read more than just the abstracts on these articles/ sources to understand how they will help you write your paper.

• You yourself choose what counts as a primary source and what counts as a secondary source based on the needs of your project. For example, a paper on the Harry Potter universe may have the novels themselves as primary sources and reviews of the novels as secondary sources. By contrast, a paper about how Harry Potter novels are reviewed will have the reviews themselves as primary sources, with additional material included as secondary sources based on how it helps us understand why the reviews are written in the way that they are.

• You do not need an introduction or a conclusion for this stage of your paper, just 3 pages of analysis.

4 copies of your rough draft and self-review letter

Here is where you can try out some of the ideas you have to see if they make sense to you, your classmates, and me. Your rough draft must:

• Be at least 5 pages long. • Include a works cited page and in-text citations in MLA format. • Include an introductory section that sets up the ideas of the paper — what is it about,

how are you going to talk about what you are going to talk about, and why is the discussion important?

• As you are writing, keep asking yourself the following questions — what is the paper arguing? how are you developing the argument throughout the paper, not just in the introduction and conclusion? what do your readers need to know about these ideas, and how are you going to communicate those things to them?

• Include a conclusion that doesn’t summarize what you’ve already said (your reader has just read what you’ve said) but explains the importance or implications of your argument.

In addition to you rough draft, you must include a self-review letter:

• 1 page, double-spaced. • Explain to your readers what you think works well in the draft, what needs more

work, and describe how your readers can help you develop the draft. Please pose at least 3 specific questions to your readers that ask them to respond to your writing and your ideas — you may want to ask them where they think your argument most clearly emerges in your paper.

And finally, please bring 4 copies of your rough draft and 4 copies of your self-review letter to class on the due date. One copy is for me, and one copy is for each of the other 3 students in the peer-review group to which I will assign you.

Peer review workshop

Here is where you can discuss the feedback that you classmates provide on your rough draft. On the due date, you must bring to class:

• A peer-review letter on each paper in your group. Please make 4 copies of each letter, one for your classmates and one for me.

• Copies of your classmates’ rough drafts with marginal notes that you can refer to during the working group discussions.

• A copy of your own rough draft, plus a copy of your previous self-review letter.

For the peer-review letter, your job is to help you classmate understand how you responded as you read their work by giving constructive feedback. Aim for about 2 double-spaced pages per letter. Try to focus on the big issues first, and begin with what you consider to be the paper’s strongest assets, or what is most interesting about it. Here are some suggestions for writing your peer-review letters:

• First, read their self-review letter. Keep their own assessment in mind, and look carefully at their questions so that you can respond specifically to them.

• Does the introduction give you a road map to what the paper will do? • Does the author move beyond describing a topic and move towards an argument

about it? • What are the key terms the author works with? Is it clear how they use them? • Does the author integrate the voices of others into paper, or do they rely on other

authors to make points for them? • Does the organization work? • Is it clear where the argument will emerge from the paper, even if the author hasn’t

yet gotten to it? In your peer-review letter, identify the argument. Underline the places where the argument emerges in the paper.

• Is there language in the self-review letter that could be included in the paper itself?

Remember that you must write a peer-review letter for each group member’s paper, and you must also give me a copy of each peer-review letter you have written.

Presentation on your paper topic

You are required to give a 10 minute presentation on your paper topic, explaining what you would like your project to do and taking questions and suggestions from your classmates about your paper. There is no required format for your presentation.

Revision assignment

Hand in a written response to the following questions about your paper:

• Identify the conversation, including but not limited to the scholarly conversation that your paper in participating in.

• Explain what questions are being asked, who is asking them, and what’s at stake. • What voices are most difficult to hear when you’re researching and writing this

paper? • Why are they difficult to hear? • Rewrite your introduction and conclusion.

Final Draft

2500 words, due by the end of our designated exam date and time.