Hi everyone!
We’re going to be moving to a new eportfolio for Spring 2014–Jenny is putting together a shiny new site for us!
So for the latest course information, please check out http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/honorsthesis14/. The site is currently in progress, but it will be ready and raring to go when we meet again in late January.
Cheers,
Lindsey
You can also view this chart as an interactive web page (which might be the easiest way to see the details), or as an image file (PNG).
On November 26th, we’re going to gather for a session on abstracts–and, a little more broadly, on effectively summarizing arguments. We’ll also talk a little bit about how to be awesome at academic conferences.
Please come to class with an abstract fully drafted. (This is a minimum of 250 words, a MAXIMUM of 450 words–NCUR will not accept longer.) It should explain either your entire argument, or a section of your argument–whatever you’d like to actually present at NCUR. Bring enough hard copies for the entire class–one for each student and each instructor. (Hard copies are going to be necessary for the activities I’m planning for that session–please print them ahead of time so that you’re not rushing or late.) Use the guidelines for abstracts found in The Craft of Research to put together your abstract draft.
Please also review the NCUR 2014 web site before class, familiarizing yourself with the conference and the abstract submission procedure.
Students can submit both papers (to be read aloud as part of a panel, with a Q&A) and posters (to be hung and explained to passers-by) to NCUR. Generally, we would prefer you to plan on submitting a paper. If you think you can make a case for submitting a poster instead, talk to me BEFORE we get together on the 26th.
I encourage you to write an abstract even if you don’t “feel ready.” Not only is it a good exercise in condensing your ideas, submitting an abstract to a conference and having that abstract accepted simply secures you a place in the conference. You can always revise & refine your ideas before you present them!
E-mail with any questions.
Thanks,
Lindsey
Here are the results of today’s class on argumentation. Above, you can see Lindsey’s whiteboard musings, and below are the results of both of our activities! (Hover over any photo to see a caption; click to enlarge it for easier viewing.)
After writing down questions and discussing the primary points behind The Craft of Research‘s chapters on argumentation, we began the activity portion of the class with an “exquisite corpse”-style game, where we traded off writing theses and evidence. Later, these papers were annotated for places where warranting seemed a probable necessity.
After some work isolating each paper’s primary claim, we used that as a starting point for an expanded version of the reasons and evidence activity in Chapter 9 of The Craft of Research. Colby and Laura wrote out their reasons/core ideas (white notecards) and key pieces of evidence (blue & green notecards), and then placed those two sets of information in relationship to one another visually. They were then invited to trade places and rearrange the other person’s material according to what they felt was the most logical pattern. Prof. Isenberg then weighed in, rearranging the work of both students into what he felt to be the most logical pattern. Finally, Colby and Laura added warrants to this structure (gold & yellow notecards), placing them where they seemed most likely to come up. Thank you to everyone for a constructive and thoughtful session!
Look through the lists of all four series to see if there are quality overviews or scholarly collections that are relevant to your project!
This is an incomplete bibliography, but it will be a good starting point for everyone. (Links are to Amazon, but you can also search for these in the CUNY libraries or the NYPL.) Look at the books cited within these books using Amazon; look at what other books cite these books using Google Scholar.
or, why simply Googling is a bad idea:
SPECIALIZED SEARCHING IS ONE WAY YOU MIGHT START. Rather than using Google and sifting through millions of results, let some sites already dedicated to inquiry do some of the heavy lifting for you.
REMEMBER THE FOLLOWING: Determining your keywords is going to be the key to your searching success. Keep track of what keywords you use when you run a search. The more you read, however, the more keywords you can think of. So you might not want to begin with search engines. In which case, why not try…
THIS IS ANOTHER PLACE YOU MIGHT START. Put together by research librarians, these are great collections. While to some degree they are institution-specific, many also include a curated selection of quality online resources available to everyone. Bonus: They are regularly updated! Many universities put these together; the ones listed here cover both our institutional resources and high-quality open online material.
If you need something that Hunter doesn’t have but the Graduate Center does, Lindsey will get it for you; just shoot her an e-mail.
Chances are, if it’s a good resource, someone has used it in the classroom! Syllabi repositories and online courses can give us a good sense of what other professional researchers think is the most relevant material on any given topic. Look for both courses dedicated to your specific topic, and survey courses which may touch on your project more broadly.
Many academic departments now use their web sites to archive their syllabi; this list is a good starting point but it is not exhaustive. Look particularly for graduate courses, which may have more secondary sources listed in the syllabus.
No one does quality research in a vacuum–and this is as much true for faculty as it is for students. Many academics were (for better or worse) early adopters of the listserv; the archives remain useful places to trace questions and get informal answers. Academic blogs are where some of the most forward-thinking researchers in any field are thinking out loud–both about their research topics of interest and providing meta-analysis about how to do quality research in the digital age. And finally, an embarrassing number of scholars are hanging out on Twitter.
These meta-sites curated the academic web beginning in the 1990s; not all of their links will be up-to-date, but they remain a good place to find quality online sources. This is particularly true if you are doing research on pre-WWII literary material, but even those working with more recent primary sources should have a look.
These come to us courtesy amazing Lehman ITF Ben Miller.
Now that you’ve all started gathering info on your projects, here are the general goals for each month of the fall course:
September
October
November
December
