WRITE: Write a blog post (at least 300 words) in which you introduce your research question. You may find your topic anywhere– from Unit One to the blog posts we wrote last week, to your peersā€™ blog posts! (Itā€™s really okay if two people write about the same topic– I promise you.) What is important here– and I canā€™t stress this enough– is that you research something you want to know more about, not something you think you already know the answer to.

You may be curious to know why there are so few African American ballerinas in major companies, or you may want to know how much ā€œhousing projectsā€ have changed in New York since James Baldwin wrote ā€œA Talk to Teachersā€ in 1963, or you may want to know what we really learn from playing computer games.Ā  Just be curious.

REMEMBER YOU MUST GET YOUR TOPIC APPROVED BY ME! Write it in question form (it canā€™t be a yes-or-no question, though). You must cover all of the questions in bold:

  • Why are you interested in this question? Ā (Feel free to talk about your own personal experience with the topic, or to tell an anecdote about your experience with this subject matter)
  • What do you expect to find in your research? (Why do you expect to find this?) Remember that itā€™s okay to be wrongā€“ you might find a completely different answer than the one you intended to find. You wonā€™t get marked down for that!

Spend some time on this– because this will serve as the first draft of the introduction for your annotated bibliography!