Your mission is to select a topic of interest – in fact, select a noun — a person, place, thing, concept, process — and establish why your topic is important. What is its importance to our lives, our culture, the economy, the government, some of the people, all of the people? In short, why does your topic matter? It’s that last part that will show the depth of your understanding of your topic. You will have to know about your “noun’s” time and place in history to establish why it is important in the scheme of things.
You will be expected to use at least eight scholarly sources in this work. However, you will see that eight sources will probably not be enough to really get to the meat of your paper. We will be reading FAB essays, and good research is king when producing a great paper, as you will see as you look at the winners’ works cited pages. The essay should be eight to ten pages, typed, double-spaced, and use MLA documentation.
In addition, be careful to pick a topic that is somewhat controversial to make it interesting. However, this is not an editorial paper in which you take a policy stand. Your opinion is second to research in this work. Last, do not pick a hugely broad topic, like, say, the Civil War or birds. Huge topics like that would be impossible to manage in a short paper, and you would be doomed from the beginning.
If you need help locating research, ask the TXCC librarians for assistance. I have found each of them to be most helpful in locating online and actual print materials. In addition, they seem to love to help students with their projects. They have always been great to me and to my students.
If you need help writing, use the academic support center. Teachers are available to help you. You have paid for this, so utilize it as needed!
This paper is due for peer review on December 1, and in final copy for me on December 6. From here on out, this class is all about researching and writing this paper.
