Although this series of assignments may at first look intimidating, it has been designed simply to enable (persuade/ force) you to do all the steps you would have to do anyway in order to write a critically informed literary research paper. The result of following this protocol is the chance to write a really good paper. I hope that going through this process at least once will help everyone do better in their other courses. I have written out samples of the various assignments for a research paper on an Emily Dickinson poem, "My Life Had Stood, A Loaded Gun." In addition, we will spend a week of class discussing how to make a paper out of various interpretations of this poem. You should thus have a very complete model of how to do your paper. (This also means nobody else gets to do work on Dickinson, however.)

1. Proposal and Initial Reference Biblio (2-4 pp.) DUE FRIDAY, OCT 3

Proposal-- 1-2 pp.

An informal, one-page announcement of your topic. For most of you, this topic will be a literary work or a feminist critic. At this point, you may be deciding among several possible works. If so, your proposal should discuss the pros and cons of each, as you currently see them. This means you should have consulted some bibliographic sources or have read a couple of articles.

You should explain why you think this text or critic can be researched; this entails having done enough preliminary research to know whether basic sources are in the Clemson library or whether you are going to have to use Inter-Library Loan. Also, if you pick a very famous work about which a lot has been written, your initial research biblio should be able to convince me that you can find enough guides to scholarship to adequately limit the number of essays and parts of books you need to read. I can't/ won't let you pick a topic that you can't cover by reading 20 essays at the most.

If your topic is not a literary work but an area of scholarship, your proposal should attempt to categorize your options, to articulate some of the sub-topics in your area. Your aim is to show me you have done some serious thinking about the topic and have done enough preliminary bibliographic research to know what some of the major issues are.

While you don't yet have to have a full bibliography, you do have to prove to me that enough feminist work has been done on your topic that you will be able to develop a comparison/contrast between feminist and other perspectives.




Reference Bibliography -- 1-2 pp.

Your Reference Bibliography should list the books necessary to do a basic study of your topic; think of making a list to guide another student doing research similar to yours. It should contain 3-7 items, each annotated to show how you determined you should include this item in your list. List can be alphabetical, in order that sources should be consulted, or any other logical order. While the annotation may be informal, the bibliographic info should be in MLA format. You should also indicate whether a source is available in Clemson Library. Items to look for include:




1. Definitive Text (Annotated to explain why you think this is the definitive text, i.e.: was listed as definitive text in Bibliography in the Norton anthology; was listed as definitive by some other reliable bibliographic source; is the most recent edition published by Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, Harvard, etc.; says in Title, Forward etc. is meant to be definitive.)




2. Definitive Biographies and biographical materials (ie. Letters)

(Optional; necessary only if biographical info likely to be particularly significant for your topic. May be included for brownie points. Explain how you know these are definitive as per above.)




3. Bibliographies of Secondary Sources: Annotated bibliographies, as books or articles. Include bibliographies from Nortons, from Twentieth-Century Views, from Twaynes, etc. (Annotate, telling how much is listed: six to ten items? 200 items? and citing source: where did you find out about this?)

a. Annotated Bibliographies

b. Lists of important critical works with evaluations as to which are most important, canonical, widely read and accepted.

c. Info on secondary sources gleaned from Footnotes or other reading on subject.

2. Conferences on Bibliography: WEEK OF OCTOBER 13-17

During this week I will meet with each of you to help you locate as much bibliography as possible on your topic and decide which of the materials will be most useful or pertinent for you. When you come to the conference you should have already located the essential sources on your topic: definitive editions, secondary bibliographies, major books, a beginning list of articles, including feminist ones. You should have xeroxed several articles. All students should have consulted on-line sources; graduate students should have done an MLA search. Bring everything you have to the conference, including search printouts.

3. Five Summaries of Significant Sources (@100-200 wds.): DUE MONDAY, OCTOBER 27

Combined with your initial reference bibliography, this is the beginning of your annotated bibliography. These first five entries should be on essays which are particularly important. The annotations should explain what led you to pick these essays, as well as summarize the basic content of the article.

4. Annotated Bibliography (10-20 ITEMS): DUE AT SITE PRESENTATION FRIDAY, NOV 24

This should be a pretty complete report on your reading, and should provide the basis for a web page on your topic. You do not yet have to have read everything in your bibliography, but you should have a pretty good idea of what the most important articles and sections of books are. Your annotated bibliography should include: references to bibliographic sources you found useful, comments on which sources are quoted and referred to the most, some sense of the variety of critical perspectives available. If you are doing a web page on your topic, it should include a brief definition of your topic, your annotated biblio, and any relevant web links that you've found. A picture or two would be nice; if you cant find anything to steal on the web, I can scan thing for you. If you do a web site, your final paper can be much shorter (5-8 pp.). If possible, we will add your paper to your website as well.

5. Research Paper (8-15 pp., depending on how much annotated biblio is on your site): DUE WEDNESDAY, DEC 3, 1997

The final research paper should be about how critical perspectives on a work or works by a writer of your choice have been changed by feminism. Papers may also be written on individual authors, how their critical reputation has changed, on themes such as female friendship, treatment of madness, etc. , or on particular feminist critics. May also trace the historical development of a particular, narrow area of feminist criticism: archetypal, female influence. Choice of authors is completely open, except it must be someone who has attracted feminist attention, ie. someone who there is feminist criticism about. I will be glad to advise students on which projects might be most successful and which project ideas are too big to do an adequate job on.

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sparks@hubcap.clemson.edu

Last update: 8/14/97