Assignment #2
Research Proposal

This assignment is simple, probably deceptively simple, but if you remember that its point is not to commit you forever and ever to a particular topic but to help give us a starting point for a collective discussion of how to get started with research, you'll do just fine with it.

Your task is to write one paragraph -- no more than one double-spaced page in length -- in which you make a very preliminary proposal concerning a topic about which you'd like to write a graduate-level analytical paper that would meet the requirements for Assignment #6 in this class (in other words, this is potentially step one of the process that will culminate in the paper you present at the end of this course).

This paragraph should contain a precise elaboration of the topic you're proposing to write about (e.g., "I want to examine the novels of Herman Melville..." or "I want to compare the Manhattan phone book to the Oxford English Dictionary..."), one or more themes that will focus your discussion of the topic (e.g., "I want to examine the novels of Herman Melville in terms of their relation to the theology of the Christian Science  church..." or "I want to compare the Manhattan phone book to the Oxford English Dictionary in terms of their repsective claims to represent the entirety of a data set...").

Your paragraph should also put forth a preliminary statement about what discourse communities (defined herein as academic disciplines  -- and perhaps subsets within them -- that are available on the SUNY Potsdam campus) are the most likely target audiences for the discussion you're proposing to undertake. Finally, your paragraph should elaborate on some of the initial research questions that are suggested by your topic in terms of making it fit into the discourse communities you propose to target (i.e., what terms and issues are you going to need to understand in the context of your target audience before you can even consider formulating a thesis).

Your proposal should not include a thesis (i.e., a claim about the topic) unless you include it as a supposition based on what you know about the topic currently (such a thesis, as all theses should be, is subject to change based on what you find when you start doing exhaustive research on the topic).

The first half of our class discussion on October 14 will be based on these proposals so please bring a printed copy to class that day (when we will meet in the lobby of Crumb Library).