First draft due April 7. 8-10 Pages

For your research paper, you will be gathering information about a particular subject of your own choosing that you think would be of interest to a large audience of readers. You can focus on a contemporary political controversy, a cultural phenomenon, a social practice or trend, a new invention or start-up that is going to change the world, a legal battle that will have serious repercussions, a local artist or musician, a dispute between two different communities, or any other subject that has caught your interest. Imagine that you are publishing this piece as a feature in a major magazine. This means you will need to appeal to a group of intellectually curious readers, get them interested in what you have to say, and offer them a new perspective, a glimpse of something that they have not read about before, or an idea that challenges their assumptions. Thus your topic ought to be fairly narrow so that you can offer an in-depth portrait and not simply repeat arguments that have already been made in other places. In other words, do not try to write a paper on the death penalty; write a paper about a particular death penalty case: one defendant who is on trial and what his/her predicament reveals about capital punishment as a whole. Through your research you will be making yourself an expert on this subject, and then you will be sharing your expertise in your paper. Your research should involve reading articles and books (minimum of 8-10), but I also strongly recommend that you do some on-the-ground reporting; i.e. you might interview people who are involved or have been affected by the phenomenon you are describing. Though choosing a situation that is close to home will make this easier, even if you focus on some controversy or development happening somewhere else in the world, you can still talk to people in NYC, and you can still try to email people in other places who might be able to offer you a relevant perspective. In your paper, you will need to offer not merely factual information, but also an interpretation, an argument about the subject. Your thesis will likely not be as straightforward or polemical as it would be in the argumentative essay. You may not offer a particular solution or prescription. But you will need to offer some kind of explanation of the subject you are exploring. If you are discussing a particular conflict, you will probably need to offer a position on what its main causes are or what its consequences will be. If you are discussing some kind of cultural activity, the work of an artist for instance, then you should probably try to explain whether you think that work is good, what function it is serving for its audience, and why. Obviously you should pick a subject that matters to you in some way. The more you care about this topic, the better your paper will be.

By March 2, you need to turn in a paragraph description of your topic, including a tentative thesis. Please try to articulate what your focus will be, offering whatever background information you think is necessary, and providing a sense of the major areas or subtopics that you will be covering. Finally, indicate why this subject is important to you, why you think it is worth exploring.

Keep in mind that you will be producing a five-minute documentary about your topic that you will present to the class. So as you research, try to gather materials (video, images, audio, etc.) that you think will make for a lively presentation.