| Research report for week 4 | |
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BEFORE CLASS 1. For class this week, please read the introductory section (pp. 1376-1383) of Vanessa Ogle’s article. What were some of the different ways that Ogle used secondary sources #151; to accomplish their argument? 2. How does Ogle’s article help you rethink your own use of secondary sources, whether for background, context, conceptualization, historical moment, historiographical contribution, parallel case studies, et cetera? BEFORE AND/OR IN CLASS What did you learn from your consultation with your faculty advisor? About primary sources? About secondary sources? About conceptualizing your project? As always, you shall be refining and rethinking your research proposal, before and in class, to help you remain mindful of the fundamental components of your research project. The crucial steps occupying most of your time should be #9-11 below, as you not only choose and gather but begin to closely examine your sources. 1. What topic, part of the world, and time period would you like to work on for your research project? 2. What is your main interest/passion in life? I.e., what can’t you stop noticing, thinking about, reading about, talking about, et cetera? 3. How is your passion reflected, either directly or indirectly, in the research project that you are considering for this semester? (My aim is that you work on something that you really, really care about.) 4. How might someone else — who is interested in their own thing, not your thing — manage to see what’s important and inspirational about your research topic? 5. How does your research topic address something that is currently missing from our historical knowledge? 6. How do new concerns and perspectives from your own lifetime lead you to re-examine history? 7. How does your research topic question some aspect of life that is unquestioned in our society/culture? 8. Framing: What is the bigger situation (time) and world (place) around your topic? 9. What important (oft cited) books and articles exist about your topic and/or situation and world around it? (I.e., secondary sources; historiography.) Tell me about your main and/or various kinds of primary sources, and their advantages and disadvantages. 10. What sources might you investigate? (I.e., primary sources; archives.) Tell me about your archives, and how they were constructed in the past, to exist now in the present. What do those archives contain, and what do they not contain? 11. Please update your workplan between now (week four) and when you have to submit a rough draft (week ten)? |