The three major projects in this class give each student an opportunity to propose a research topic, perform scholarly research on that topic, write a scholarly paper making an analytical argument that is supported by evidence, and finally, present their research findings in a formal presentation before an audience of his or her peers.

From the syllabus, these are the three assignments:

Each of these assignments is described in further detail in the following.

Research Paper Abstract

Before endeavoring to write an argumentative essay supported by evidence, you should develop a well-thought-out plan. To that end, the first phase of these research-oriented assignments is the abstract or proposal.

In general, the research paper should make the case or argument that a given cultural artifact (a book, short story, poem, song, album, movie, video game, episode of a television series, artwork, etc.) has some importance to our understanding of law, influences or is influenced by law, enlightens its audience to issues of law (rightly or wrongly), or addresses fundamental issues relating to law or jurisprudence.

Your argument must be supported by evidence. One form of evidence will come from your “reading” of the cultural “text.” Explain to your audience what you see in the cultural work that is of relevance to the law and your argument. Another form of evidence will come from sources that you find via the library and library databases of scholarly journals and their articles. Of course, if you do not find enough supporting evidence in the databases, you might reconsider your paper’s topic.

Your research paper abstract should follow these guidelines:

• Identify the object of your study and briefly describe it (include relevant names, production company, year of publication/release, etc). This is the cultural work that you have selected. Keep your selection focused and avoid being overly broad (e.g., an episode of a television series instead of an entire television series–except in cases where a single narrative might arc across several episodes or a season).
• State your preliminary argument. What do you intend to argue in your research paper about the object of your study? How does it relate to law? What do you want to argue, assert, and contend about the object of your paper and its relationship to law?
• Discuss the evidence that you already know or are aware of that supports your argument. If you can’t come up with convincing evidence with none or some initial research, you should reconsider your argument or the object of your paper.
• Essentially, you are performing due diligence before writing your research paper. You are making sure that you have a good topic, and you are trying to convince me that you have a good topic for your paper. Based on your abstract, I will give you the green light to proceed and/or provide advice about how to focus what you have written in the abstract to help you create a strong research paper.
• At 250 words, it should fit on a single sheet of paper. Format your abstract using a basic memo format (see this site for an example).
• On a separate sheet of paper (and not counting towards your 250 words), write “Working Bibliography.” Find ten sources through the library databases that you might use in your research, and write bibliographic entries for these ten sources in Chicago format. You do not have to read these five articles in full or even use them, but they might become useful to you and by listing them, you demonstrate to me due diligence (again) on your part to develop a strong idea for your final paper.
• With your abstract memo as the first page and your Working Bibliograph as the second, staple these two pages together and hand in at the beginning of class on the day they are due.

Research Paper

Using your abstract as a guide, write a 2,500-word essay (about ten double-spaced pages) that analyzes your abstract’s object in terms of the issues of law, justice, and/or jurisprudence. Your paper must include quotes supporting your argument and providing examples for your discussion. In addition to citing your paper’s object of analysis, your paper must include at least ten library-sourced resources. These might come from your working bibliography, or they might be new sources that you find in your research. Your library sources might discuss the object of your analysis, or they might address the issues that you wish to raise about your object of analysis–as long as the citation is germane to your discussion, it is perfectly applicable to cite and include in your paper’s bibliography (remember, do not list something on your bibliography that you do not cite in some way). Use Chicago style for your quotes, citations, and bibliography.

To ensure everyone progresses toward a successful paper, an outline of your paper will be due on Monday, November 7. Your outline should clearly indicate what you plan to discuss about your object of analysis. I would recommend having each top level heading (I, II, III, etc.) be one paragraph. Your outline does not have to cite any outside sources, but if you want to include notes, such as “include quote from X book” in one paragraph, please do so. The outline is more for your benefit than for mine. It provides you with a plan for the execution of your essay. Of course, you can change your essay as you write it, but at least with the outline in hand, you know that you have a good idea about what you should write about and in what order you should write it.

Research Presentation

Toward the end of the semester, you will present a synopsis or summary of your research paper to the class by giving an oral presentation combined with a PowerPoint presentation. This presentation should only be 5 minutes long. You will need to time yourself giving your presentation in advance so that you present no longer than 5 minutes. As a rule of thumb, reading a single page of double-spaced writing take about 2.5 minutes. So, you will want to aim at condensing your 10-page paper into a 2-page spoken presentation. You may use a printed script for your presentation. Handwritten scripts or notes are not allowed. Your PowerPoint presentation should use images and writing to anchor what you have to say, but it should not include every word that you intend to say. PowerPoint supports your spoken presentation by engaging your audience visually. It should not detract from your spoken presentation. The schedule for presentations will be randomly assigned. On your assigned day, be prepared with your PowerPoint presentation on a flash drive and dress business casual for professionalism.