Guidelines for the Outline/Proposal

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HUMN 303 Professor Rectenwald

How to Succeed on the Outline!

Guidelines for the Outline/Proposal: An outline is a convenience to help you tack down the topics you hope to cover in a Final Paper, and a proposal is the extended and full description of your project (as best you know it at the time of writing). Understand that you are making a best effort to describe your project early on, but allow yourself to be open to growth and change as you conduct research and focus your intentions.

Keep in mind that your paper will look something like an academic paper published in an academic journal. It will have a thesis and several original ideas that are demonstrated and explored with various primary and secondary sources. (Note: primary source example(s): song lyrics, literature, images of paintings, the Bible, a speech by Martin Luther King, movies; secondary sources are essays written by experts such as newspaper articles, magazine articles, journal articles as well as podcasts, lectures, documentaries.)

1. My suggestion is to start by teaching yourself about the topic by reading things like encyclopedia articles (Wikipedia is ok for this), listening to podcasts (iTunes University has a wealth of podcasts on your topic!).

2. Next, develop a thesis such as “Mary Shelly’s horrors and fears of childbirth are realized and explored in the novel Frankenstein which can be viewed as a metaphorical understanding of how women dealt with childbirth in the 19th century.”

3. After you have a general idea of your paper, you can start sketching it out. Use the outline as a way to take notes on the ideas you want to explore. But don’t be vague and don’t just fill in the space. In order for an outline to help you, you must do some preliminary research into the topic.

4. As you’re outlining and researching, try to focus on good writing—here is an article about Frankenstein and childbirth that would be a model for your own work and that you can even quote from:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/books-and-arts/101435/mary-shelley-frankenstein-godwin-bodleian-oxford

5. Don’t be intimidated by expert writers. Embrace them. This is why you are in college—to learn to write well and read difficult stuff! Read things that are over your head, look up words you don’t know, and take as much from an article as you can that interests you. If it doesn’t interest you, move on to something that does. For instance, some see the Frankenstein novel as dystopic vision of capitalism and it was a prophetic look at how scientists would be manipulating DNA to grow bigger crops and even humans in the 20th century. These are the types of readings you want to be doing—they use critical thinking as well as research to make their claims. THERE ARE NO WRONG ANSWERS IN THE HUMANITIES. (Only poorly-argued answers.) Trust your reading of the text, the images, the music—you’re human and they were made for you!

I. Introduction and Thesis Statement

· Thesis should include the topic choice and your personal angle on the topic—you MUST have a thesis even if you want to change it later.

A thesis is a debatable claim that states your stance on an issue. It can be as simple as “The Dark Ages are a misunderstood period” to something more involved such as “Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein reveals problematic and complex role women played in society in the 18th and 19th century…” A thesis CANNOT be a fact, a question, or a personal conviction (such as “I believe…”)

· In your introduction you also want to set the stage for your argument

II. Major Point # 1 (this is a main point related to the thesis). Try to demonstrate that you have started the research process. You will want to have some in-text citations on your final draft in each of the major paragraphs,

· Research to support your point (insert author and date)

· Other ideas that you have come to or plan to look into regarding this major point

III. Major Point # 2

· Research to support your point (insert author and date)

· Other ideas that you have come to or plan to look into regarding this major point

IV. Major Point # 3

· Research to support your point (insert author and date)

· Other ideas that you have come to or plan to look into regarding this major point

V. Major Point # 4 (Add as many points as you like)

· Research to support your point (insert author and date)

· Other ideas that you have come to or plan to look into regarding this major point

VI. Conclusion

· Recap thesis statement

Add References Page here!

Format your references page according to APA format? See sample references page below:

http://dianahacker.com/pdfs/Hacker-Mira-APA-Ref.pdf

Ctl + click to follow the link.

Notice that the spacing, indentation, punctuation, capitalization, etc. is all part of APA format.

Please let me know if you are having problems finding resources to assist you with APA format.

Topics

Unless you have emailed me you must choose one of these topics and address the questions. You can even copy and paste the questions and then add them to the outline above. See where they fit in best and what logical order you want to cover them. The questions are a guide to get you thinking but they shouldn’t limit you. Just keep in mind that you’re NOT writing an encyclopedia entry where you list EVERYTHING you know about the topic. Use your critical thinking skills to come up with creative and unique responses to these issues.

1. Compare the culture that produced the Venus de Willendorf with the culture that produces the Barbie doll. What common themes do you see in the Paleolithic culture that we share or have rejected in modern culture? Consider whether we worship Barbie, and if so, how? Consider society’s view of women in the Barbie era compared to that which the artifactual record suggests was the view of Paleolithic women.

2. Regard Plato's view of the ideal from his Simile of the Cave and compare it to Aristotle's essay, Rhetoric. Plato believed that artistic language was downright evil, because it could persuade weak-minded people to enact unethical behaviors. He believed, for example, that the bed the artist made was closer to the ideal in that even though it was a shadow of the ideal, it at least had function. However, the bed that the artist made was furthest from the ideal and was a shadow of a shadow and lacking even functional utility. Aristotle, on the other hand, believed that the only way to get to the ideal was through the abstractions of language and that the artist's bed captured the essence of bed far better than the carpenter's bed; that is, to live in a reasoned and logos-centric attitude of thought was to be closest to the ideal.

3. What does the term the Dark Ages mean? In what ways were the Dark Ages dark? In what ways was this society inadvertently preparing to emerge in modernity through the preservation of classical literature and scripture? What particular impact did Ireland have in the world that would emerge from the Dark Ages? Consider the literature produced in early Old English, a Germanic language with a Celtic imagination, expressed in Arthurian legend. What do these breathtaking legends of knights and honor have to do with our modern sense of ethics? What is the chivalric code?

4. The early modern (what used to be called the Renaissance) period followed the Middle Ages (which followed the presumably Dark Ages) and is a time––indeed, a very long time––in which there was a rebirth (the literal meaning of the word Renaissance) of classical culture. In this rebirth, classical literature and scripture flourished. And those who will have studied the Dark Ages may recognize that it was those secluded Irish monks who copiously hand copied and illuminated scripture and classical literature that they then reintroduced via Scotland and England into the rest of Europe (effectively jump-starting the university system). And thus a Renaissance began in the temperate climate of Italy and mushroomed northward and culminated (for the study of Western civilization’s purposes) in Renaissance England. Renaissance England produced one of the greatest authors in the history of the Western world—Shakespeare. Although many of us find his language to be distant, his take on relationships, the appropriateness of sovereignty, and such issues as murder and revenge and law and justice are viewed in modern terms. Examine Hamlet as a revenge tragedy. In what ways did Shakespeare set Hamlet up for conflict, that is, to avenge his dead father's honor against the unspeakable crime of fratricide, while commenting on the barbarity of revenge?

5. Find a modern revenge drama and detail the ways in which the drama you chose and Hamlet inform each other. In other words, looking at literature is not a one-way street, as if the past only has impact on the present. Quite the contrary, the past and present are in dialogue with each other. Look at how modern revenge motifs help us to understand some of Hamlet’s moral misgivings and the complexities of his choices. For the truly ambitious, you might connect both Hamlet and a modern revenge drama to archetypal literature, such as the descent into hell and the return seen in literature of antiquity.

6. Consider the psychological and physical traumas faced by women who had no control over their reproductive organs. In what way is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein a psychological representation of her fear of childbirth?

7. Read T. S. Eliot's great modernist poem "The Waste Land" and his essay Tradition and the Individual Talent. To what extent do you think Eliot is successful in demonstrating poetry that emerges not from emotional states but from rather cunning and completely self-aware states that emphasize not the catharsis of the poet's emotions but are geared to producing catharsis in the audience?

8. Throughout American history, music becomes critically important. Look at the music that led up to civil rights. You may wish to select specific musical pieces, such as Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”––a song written by a New York Jewish man who gave the song to Holiday. You also might consider Irving Berlin's “Suppertime,” which was made famous on Broadway by Ethel Waters. Both songs explore the practice of lynching African American men. These collaborations, particularly between Jewish intellectuals and early African American social activists, are critically important and grow in intensity, leading to the freedom singers of the late 1950s and 1960s. These include Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and many more who joined hands with Martin Luther King, Mahalia Jackson, Harry Belafonte, Odetta, and many others. Civil rights could never have occurred without interracial collaborations. Even Harry Truman, a Missouri-raised man of his historical context, was able to rise above his social and political encoding and began the civil rights movement in America through the legislation he introduced.

9. Consider the impact of the Vietnam War on American culture. In the decades prior to the 1980s, two issues beset American culture: civil rights and the Vietnam War. Both were televised directly into living rooms on all three channels. On college campuses throughout the world, but especially on American campuses, antiwar protests were routine. Hippies often were thought to conduct themselves on the premises of antiwar, free sex, and lots of drugs. The music that emerged from this era is still famously current and listened to today. It was an era of convertibles, gas guzzlers, freedom, and endless summers. Then that generation grew into adults––your parents and grandparents. Writing with sensitivity to the nuances of the era, what happened to the dream?

HUM 303 Outline Rubric

Category	Pts. Possible	Pts. Received	Total: 100
Thesis: Outline is centered around a thesis chosen from the list of topics OR approved by instructor	15	15	A few things to keep in mind: • A thesis statement cannot be a fact • A thesis cannot be a question • A thesis cannot be based on personal conviction alone • A thesis should contain a debatable claim
Topic: Topic selected from the list under Course Home > Course Project. Topic is narrowed and focused.	10	10	If points are deducted here, you will want to work with your professor to narrow your topic.
Content: Outline is detailed; shows potential for research; not too informative; full sentences are used in place of lists; citations are added to demonstrate research where necessary; outline shows considerable thought and preparation and not just brainstorming.	65	65	Be sure to write in complete sentences for your outline. Each sentence should represent a larger section of the paper (such as a paragraph)
Mechanics: spelling, grammar, punctuation are used properly throughout; APA style is used for in-text citations and References page	10	10	Be sure to proofread your work for errors. You can also have someone else read your work in case there is anything that you miss. This is a key step in catching errors and providing a much better quality piece of writing.