Final Paper
Proposal Due: April 18 (5%)
Annotated Bibliography Due: May 2 (10%)
First Draft Due: May 9 (15%)
Final Paper Due: May 20 (70%)
The final paper is a research assignment. In this paper, you will write a historical account of your neighborhood (or A neighborhood) in New York City, making an argument about what the neighborhood means. Papers must be 6-7 pages double spaced, written in Times New Roman font with 1 inch margins and must use 4 sources. Some guidelines:
- You can approach the neighborhood’s history from any angle you like. Some ideas would be to do a cultural analysis in which you look at the different types or modes of cultural activity that have taken place in the neighborhood over the years (was it a manufacturing site that later became an artist’s colony and then a haven for the young, rich and hip like Tribeca?), or at the ways literary or cinematic representations of the neighborhood have changed over time, or at the ways the socio-economic profile has shifted.
- You will have to choose and account for the time frame you work with—are you going to go back to the Colonial period (I don’t recommend it, considering the length of the paper), or just focus on the span of time from the 50’s to the present? Give an account of why you start your analysis at the time that you do.
- Your history should tell a story about the neighborhood, ultimately explaining what the neighborhood means and to whom. Are you explaining what the neighborhood means to those who live there? To New York City as a whole? To those who don’t live there? Whose misperception about the neighborhood are you correcting?
- Part of your paper should be about the current state of the neighborhood as observed by you. So if you’re not doing your own neighborhood, you’ll have to go there.
Second Paper
Abstract Due: March 14 (5%)
Outline/Map Due: March 19 (15%)
Paper Due: April 4 (80%)
You are applying to give a paper at an undergraduate student conference on life in the city. Write a four-page paper for this conference using either “The Metropolis and Mental Life” or one of the readings by Michel de Certeau to think about a representation of urban life. The representation you choose can be fictional—it can be a film, novel, short story or painting/photograph—or it can be non-fictional—it can be an essay, a speech, or a newspaper, journal or magazine article. Your aim is to show how the ideas in the theoretical text are reflected, complicated or contradicted in the representation you choose, and how a consideration of the two works (the theoretical text and the representation) together reveal an often unconsidered truth about urban life that the conference goers have probably not considered before. Because the other conference goers might not have read the works you are referring to, be sure to summarize them succinctly without losing the argumentative angle of your paper. In order to do this, you must put Simmel’s or de Certeau’s argument in your own easy to understand language while keeping in mind what you want the reader to take from your summary.
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What is an abstract?
An abstract is either a formal proposal to present a paper at an academic conference or a concise summary of a published article. In this assignment, you will be writing the first type of abstract—a proposal for a conference paper. The purpose of this type of abstract is to convince conference organizers that a paper will be (a) smart and (b) not boring–that it will interest fellow conference-goers. Abstracts generally describe the proposed paper’s topic and argument, identify its main materials, and suggest why it will matter to others.
Your abstract should be no more than 250 words, typed, double-spaced in Times New Roman font with one-inch margins. Remember to come up with an inventive title that will catch the eye of the conference-organizers.
These are the basic components of an abstract in any discipline:
1) Motivation/problem statement: Why do we care about the problem? What practical, scientific, theoretical or artistic gap is your research filling?
2) Methods/procedure/approach: What did you actually do to get your results? (e.g. analyzed 3 novels, completed a series of 5 oil paintings, interviewed 17 students)
3) Results/findings/product: As a result of completing the above procedure, what did you learn/invent/create?
4) Conclusion/implications: What are the larger implications of your findings, especially for the problem/gap identified in step 1?
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How to Make an Outline (from http://web.psych.washington.edu/writingcenter/writingguides/pdf/outline.pdf)
What is an Outline?
An outline is a formal system used to think about and organize your paper. For example, you can use it to see whether your ideas connect to each other, what order of ideas works best, or whether you have sufficient evidence to support each of your points. Outlines can be useful for any paper to help you see the overall picture.
There are two kinds of outlines: the topic outline and the sentence outline.
- The topic outline consists of short phrases. It is particularly useful when you are dealing with a number of different issues that could be arranged in a variety of ways in your paper.
- The sentence outline is done in full sentences. It is normally used when your paper focuses on complex details. The sentence outline is especially useful for this kind of paper because sentences themselves have many of the details in them. A sentence outline also allows you to include those details in the sentences instead of having to create an outline of many short phrases that goes on page after page.
Both topic and sentence outlines follow rigid formats, using Roman and Arabic numerals along with capital and small letters of the alphabet. This helps both you and anyone who reads your outline to follow your organization easily. This is the kind of outline most commonly used for classroom papers and speeches (see the example at the end of this paper). There is no rule for which type of outline is best. Choose the one that you think works best for your paper.
Make the Outline
1. Identify the topic. The topic of your paper is important. Try to sum up the point of your paper in one sentence or phrase. This will help your paper stay focused on the main point.
2. Identify the main categories. What main points will you cover? The introduction usually introduces all of your main points, then the rest of paper can be spent developing those points.
3. Create the first category. What is the first point you want to cover? If the paper centers around a complicated term, a definition is often a good place to start. For a paper about a particular theory, giving the general background on the theory can be a good place to begin.
4. Create subcategories. After you have the main point, create points under it that provide support for the main point. The number of categories that you use depends on the amount of information that you are going to cover; there is no right or wrong number to use.
By convention, each category consists of a minimum of two entries. If your first category is Roman numeral I, your outline must also have a category labeled roman numeral II; if you have a capital letter A under category I, you must also have a capital letter B. Whether you then go on to have capital letters C, D, E, etc., is up to you, depending on the amount of material you are going to cover. You are required to have only two of each numbered or lettered category.
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First Paper: How do we know our homes? (3-4 pgs) 10%
Due: Thursday, February 21
In this assignment, I would like you to describe your home, keeping in mind some of the ideas we’ve been discussing about experience and consciousness from William James and Alva Noe. You may want to discuss the role feelings and the five senses play in our experience of our homes. If you choose to say that we experience our homes primarily through our 5 senses, you may write on one or more sense—but if you choose only Fall201one, it cannot be sight. Your paper should be structured around an argument about how we know our homes, so keep in mind the three elements of an argument: 1. It is not obvious, 2. It can be argued against, 3. It is supported by evidence.
The Mechanics:
Use 12 pt. Times New Roman Font, double spaced with 1-inch margins
Successful Papers Will Have:
- A concise and engaging introduction in which an interesting argument is clearly laid out
- Coherent, well-developed body-paragraphs
- A sense of development from beginning to end
- Clear, graceful transitions between paragraphs
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Blog Posts and Reading Responses (10%):
The blog will be a regular part of our class. It is a place where you can break out of the academic tone we will be practicing in our more formal writing and engage with the ideas of the course in a more conversational, and dare I say, exciting way. We are all writing all the time—in text messages, emails, tweets and status updates—and these assignments are intended to build a bridge from the informal writing you are already comfortable with and doing all the time prose the more formal academic prose we will be working on together in class. I encourage you to post pictures and videos to accompany your posts and to comment on each other posts—our blog will be as fun and interesting as we make it! Blog posts should be at least 2 developed paragraphs long and are due by 12 pm on the day before they are listed as “writing due” on the syllabus. There will be 3 types of blog posts:
- Free Choice: In this type of blog post, you can explore any of the ideas we’ve read about, discussed or that you’ve been thinking/ talking about on your own (related to class material). This blog post can be anything you want it to be!
- Reading Log: Alternatively, you can choose a reading we’re doing that week and share your experience with it. Was it challenging? fun? Did it make you think of anything else we’ve read this semester or that you’re reading/doing/talking about outside of class? What do you think the author was trying to accomplish?
- Reflective Log: When this type of blog post is assigned, I’d like you to reflect on your writing process—what is going well? What isn’t? You can also ask questions or for advice. Use your community!