Research Report Assignment

Brief description: As part of your final exam, you will write a report and submit a bibliography summarizing research on a topic of your choice.

Rationale: Research is essential to a liberal arts education, but in a summer session an outside research paper disrupts the reading schedule. This exercise coordinates research with the summer schedule. You may further coordinate your research report with your or someone else’s presentation.

Format: As with the midterm, you may write your research report (and the rest of the exam) either in the classroom or via email. If you write it in class, you must email me your bibliography.

Time: This part of the exam should take about one hour. You may perform this part of the exam at any time in the two hours and 50 minutes allowed.

Length: Given different handwriting and styles, length requirements are impossible to estimate. Please don’t ask! Balance the need to write well with the need to write as much as possible.

Report style: You will describe your topic, explain its significance (or why you were interested in it), what you knew (or thought you knew) about it, and what you found out. The exercise is called “a report,” but it should exemplify the same values as any essay: interest, organization, and insight. Comparing what you found from different sources is one obvious way to organize a report like this.

Research requirements:

You will summarize research from at least four sources.  The breakdown of these four sources may change with your topic, but the following will be the “default” procedure.

·        At least one source should be a “background” source like an encyclopedia or handbook in the Neumann Library Reference Area. (Required)

·        At least one should be a “secondary” source such as a scholarly book or article that discusses some aspect of your subject. (Required)

·        One of your sources may be from the World Wide Web, and one of them may involve an interview with an “expert” on the subject, but both these paths are optional.  (By an “expert,” I mean someone with special or advanced knowledge of your subject.  You might consult other professors here or elsewhere, but there are many other possibilities.)

·        You may use more than four sources, but don’t use more than you can report on in an hour’s work. If you research many more sources, just choose the best for discussion.

Topics for Research Reports: Research and write about a subject related to the course that you want to know more about.  Here are possible topic areas.

·        Your presentation genre (or someone else’s) then and now.  Extend the research you or someone else began on a presentation genre. Compare what you learned at the time of the original presentation with what you have learned since.  Or you may research a new genre and summarize your findings. Consider researching a particular example of the genre.

·        Research on a particular tragedy (or comedy).  Read samples of the background and secondary research on a play from this course.  (With permission, you may do more than one play or involve a play beyond this course’s reading list.)  What basic facts do you learn about the play from your background sources?  Regarding your secondary research, what issues in the play do critics discuss, and what conclusions do they reach?  How has your research deepened or changed your perception of the play?  What is the significance of the play in the history of drama? Naturally I’d appreciate any insights your research gave you regarding genre.

·        Research on a playwright.  This may involve more background research, but secondary research could concentrate on a particular play. Consider the Greek playwrights, later playwrights in the course, or modern playwrights we didn’t have a chance to read (Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Lady Gregory, Aphra Behn, Wole Soyinka, August Wilson, Anna Deavere Smith). O’Neill would be a possibility as long as it extends the information offered in class and as long as you coordinate your report with your essay on O’Neill. What did your sources tell you about your playwright’s career, reputation, and works?  Again you might focus on critical reception of a particular play.

·        Any other type of topic you want to propose, as long as it involves some basic research of the kind described and relates to the course’s interests.

Bibliography or “Works Cited” for Research Report: Email (or otherwise electronically transmit) to me a copy of your bibliography or “Works Cited.” If you write the exam in-class, you should also hand in a print-out of your bibliography. MLA Style is preferred, but as long as I could find the source through your listing, okay. In your research report you may refer to these sources by last name of author or by brief title.