Research Project Proposals:Assignment Sheet English 1100:Composition 1 Food Additives

Write a single-spaced, 500 word proposal suggesting a topic, theme, or area of interest for your research
project. These projects should be on things that you can make an argument about, but you shouldn’t be too
concerned with the argumentative aspect of your final project now. That is to say, if you are walking into the
research paper with a thesis in mind, that’s not a research paper: it’s an exercise in self-verification.
Your humble professor doesn’t need you to perform an exercise in self-verification. Your humble professor
needs you to do some authentic investigation of some idea, event, or thing that can be authentically engaged
and challenged, that can in turn lead you to something you don’t already know: something new. This is called
learning. It is accomplished through research. That is why we are here.

Research Project Proposals: Assignment Sheet English 1100: Composition 1 I

nstructions:   Write a single-spaced, 500 word proposal suggesting a topic, theme, or area of interest for your research project. These projects should be on things that you can make an argument about, but you shouldn’t be too concerned with the argumentative aspect of your final project now. That is to say, if you are walking into the research paper with a thesis in mind, that’s not a research paper: it’s an exercise in self-verification. Your humble professor doesn’t need you to perform an exercise in self-verification. Your humble professor needs you to do some authentic investigation of some idea, event, or thing that can be authentically engaged and challenged, that can in turn lead you to something you don’t already know: something new. This is called learning. It is accomplished through research. That is why we are here.   Note: Most of the time, it’s easier to learn something if you stop thinking about what is appropriate for school and start thinking about what you want to know. What questions do you have about the world? We begin, always, with a question. For many students this presents a particular problem. That is probably because you have been trained, as your humble professor was trained, to believe that your interests are not “good enough” for school. You have been taught to think that you should write about a topic that has pros and cons, where you can pick a side and argue a thesis for or against. Ideally (you were told) this should be a topic that no one in 1,000 years could possibly care about. You asked your high school teacher, “Can I write my paper on Hello Kitty?” And your high school teacher said, “Well, Timmy, I think you want to pick something with a little more substance for school.” So you wrote about the ethics of stem cell research, instead.   For the purposes of this class, chase something you care about, please. A paper on Hello Kitty would be ten times more interesting (and ultimately more useful) than almost anything almost you could possibly say about the ethics of stem cell research at this point in time. I promise.   So what do you want to write about? What do you want to learn about? Note that the question is not what do you already know and feel strongly about, but what do you want to learn about? If you know everything there is to know about gun control, for example, or legalizing marijuana, and you really, really want to tell me about it, here’s what you do: go to the grocery store, buy yourself a bag of those little processed donuts (chocolate frosting, regular cake inside), and bring them to me. Because that is the amount of intellectual energy you will be putting into your project, and that’s about the amount of intellectual substance your project will have. Any argument that has been walked all over in the press and in public discourse over the past twenty years or so has ceased to be a real argument. It has become an imitation of an argument: a processed food that one pulls from the shelf at the grocery store and presents as though it is an opinion or an idea. It’s not an opinion. It’s not an idea. It’s a reiteration of an established platform. It won’t do.  Remember to consider how your topic might be complicated. The excerpts from documentaries that we’ll watch in class next week should help you get some insight into this: the business of how things get complicated, and why that makes them more interesting. For instance, The Filth and the Fury appears at face level to be the 2  history of a rock and roll band, when in fact it swerves within thirty seconds of the opening credits into a meditation on the plight of the working class, the failure of public education, and the value of transgression as a tool for affecting social change. Consider how your own project might be complicated in similar ways. Nothing is as simple as it seems. Your proposal should touch on this.  That aside, your proposals can take any shape you want them to. There’s no formula. However, if you would feel more comfortable with a formula (or format), in general you want to use these questions as a guide:  1. What is the topic? Why are you interested in it?  2. Why should we be interested in it? That is: why does it matter in the world? Why is it important? 3. What do you want to learn about it? What would the focus of your research be? What is your question? For example, if #1, above, has something to do with scuba diving, and #2 has something to do with the beauty of it (we should care about scuba diving because what we see underwater is beautiful), the focus of your research might be the latest developments in underwater photography. It might also be something about how scuba diving raises awareness of the need to preserve coral reefs. It could be how climate change affects the business of scuba diving. Are dive shops booming? Or are they facing hard times? The point is that there’s a great deal of versatility within any given subject matter. You should have some idea of the direction you will take. 4. This does not you should tell me what your argument is. It might be n opportunity to talk a little about the arguments you already know about surrounding the issue. But remember, I want you to do your research before you make up your mind. 5. Speaking of research, you should probably have one or two ideas for how you might go about conducting your research. At least one of these ideas should have to do with books or magazines: will you read about the history of scuba diving? You should also try to throw in something investigative or experiential: will you interview a dive shop owner? Will you swim with sharks? That sort of thing.  6. Related to #5, above, how can you complicate your research? How can you make it more interesting than a standard issue research paper? What differentiates your approach from the 2 a.m. Red Bull, Google, cut and paste approach to the college paper?  7. What problems do you foresee? What’s going to be your biggest challenge?   Note that these seven points are just general questions: points of departure. Depending on your topic, you may not be able to answer all of these questions fully. We are at the beginning of a process, here, and no one is expecting you to have a fully formed idea. Indeed, I discourage fully formed ideas at this stage of the game. These are just some questions to get you going, and to give you an idea of what a good proposal looks like. Think of me as an investor. You’re trying to get me to support your research. You want to tell me what it is and what makes it special. Why should I invest in your project? The most difficult thing is going to be setting your project apart from all the boring college papers that are written all over the country every semester. Not everyone is going to be able to do this perfectly, or even particularly well.  But your proposals count for 10% of your final grade, so you have to try.