3/18: P2, Building a Proposal

Today, we're going to talk about the next major paper, which we'll do a deeper dive into next week. Your homework this week is still just the special weird issue blog post due Friday. This lesson is just a quick "let's look ahead and recap" discussion, since the next major assignment, P2, is a proposal for P3. More on what that means below.

(Fun fact: this is the point in the semester last spring where we all moved online due to COVID-19.)

The Semester So Far...

So, arguments have 4 basic ingredients: ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos. You remember those.

Ideology is the fundamental, often unconscious assumptions and beliefs that make up the basic parts of our reality. Audiences (i.e. people) have them, and can even have multiple contradictory ones. Ideologies affect what people consider normal, and therefore, shape what kinds of arguments and combinations of ingredients will work best for them.

In addition to ideologies and underlying assumptions, audiences are part of certain discourse communities, which also have rules about how they like stuff presented to them (and ideologies and underlying assumptions too--they're everywhere).

Once you’ve picked a thing to discuss, and want to convince people, your basic steps are:

Identify your audience.
Identify what your audience needs and will believe.
Do research, get sources.
Plan your argument, making style and structural choices. Figure out how to package your idea in that. (Alternately, think of a way to tell them the story of how you got from where they are now to where you want them to be.)
Write/record your argument.
Get the argument to that audience.

The rest of the semester is about steps 3 through 7.

The Assignment: P2, the Proposal and Annotated Bibliography

A proposal is a document which describes your plan for a future project, and aims to get permission (or funding/support) to do that project. In the case of this class, P2 (this proposal) is your proposal for what you would like to write your future research paper (P3) about.

A proposal is a short document that does two jobs:

Describe the project and its core question or thesis.
Convinces people to let you do that project.

In the simplest form, it generally runs about two paragraphs in length, with a list of early research sources you’ve looked at to write those two paragraphs. While this makes proposals sound easy, those two paragraphs have to be freaking amazing in real life if you want to get that sweet, sweet research money (or teacher approval, for you overachievers).

Luckily for you, I happen to be crazy good at these (*cough* notahumblebragatall *cough*). I convinced a university to pay me to stay at home and not teach for two years. In that time I wrote a book and also stumbled into a few active warzones mostly by accident. It’s less exciting than it sounds, but I got paid!

Here’s my basic formula for a good proposal. It can be short, long, simple, or complex depending on your future profession, but these parts are always there, roughly in this order:

State your thesis or main question in a precise, direct, and readable way.
Describe the conversation that exists in current research about this thing.
Describe your basic plan for how you’re going to do this project.
State, realistically, what the stakes of your project are.
Bonus: a list of preliminary research you looked at to get this far, so the reader knows you’re serious business and not just goofing around.

In your case, here’s what we’re looking for:

The Plan

The proposal is worth 15% of your course grade, and does not have a real wordcount. By the time you finish writing it, the whole document will be about 1200 words, but the proposal part (steps 1-4 above) might be 500 or less. The draft (proposal definitely, annotated bibliography optional) is due on March 28. Then, we'll meet one-on-one to discuss and develop your proposal ideas during the week of March 29 to April 2. Then, peer Review is on April 5. The final version is due April 7.

These due dates are for the proposal, not for a full research paper. That’s a separate assignment (P3) with its own due dates.

The proposal has a title. Then, it consists of two paragraphs, broken down about like this:

In this essay, I am going to [MAIN QUESTION/THESIS THING]. Currently, experts [ARE TALKING ABOUT THIS HOW? DROP SOME NAMES AND GIVE SOME BASIC CONTEXT. PROBABLY A FEW SENTENCES. SHOW OFF YOUR PRELIMINARY RESEARCH.]

In order to explore [YOUR TOPIC], I intend to conduct research into X, Y, and Z. My paper will begin by [DOING SOMETHING]. Next, it will [DO STEP 2...AND SO ON]. My argument here intervenes in [THAT CONVERSATION YOU MENTIONED EARLIER], and attempts to [WHAT DOES IT DO FOR THE CONVERSATION/ISSUE/WORLD?]

(The two gray boxes are the two separate paragraphs.)

Next, the assignment includes a list of 8 or more sources. Each source is accompanied by a one or two-sentence “annotation,” which is just a little note that describes what the source is about and what it contributes to your project. This part is called an annotated bibliography, and exists to prove that you've done enough ground work to be "serious" about the project. The following sample is MLA formatted, but if your field uses a different citation style, you may use that.

Harris-Peyton, Michael. "Postcolonial Detectives and the Subtle Art of Stealing It Back." Clues 38.1 (Spring 2020): 60-69. 

This article is about the movie Black Panther, and contains a good examination of how property rights get complicated in formerly colonized nations. This will help my project [DO A THING].

The idea of this list, or annotated bibliography, is that you do enough preliminary research that you can name sources that helped you with the project. For this assignment, shoot for 8 total sources, with at least 5 of those sources being expert or scholarly. More on doing research next Monday, and more on formatting this part next Thursday.

Note that it is okay not to have a complete annotated bibliography in your P2 draft. It is not unusual for preliminary research to take a little while, and your project may evolve and change in response to your findings. You're not marrying a source or topic idea here. That's why we take almost 3 weeks to write the proposal.

Below is a walkthrough of this assignment, using a ridiculous sample proposal:

What's this, a normal thumbnail?

Practical Concept: Choosing Good Sources

While we're talking about research, here's a nice little mnemonic device to help you pick out sources that can help you: The STAR Criteria! These will be more useful in P3, but can help direct preliminary research too.

Ask yourself, is the source you want to use:

Sufficient: does the source, and how you might use it, make the point you need to make? In other words, does it move your argument forward for your audience?
Typical: is the source consistent with knowledge in its field? Is the source reliable-looking? Is it not a crazy internet conspiracy theory? Did an expert write it?
Accurate: is the source well-done and free of stupid mistakes? Is there an obvious gap in its reasoning or procedure that you are risking bringing into your own argument?
Relevant: is the source not super-duper out of date? Are there any more recent updates? Can my audience understand this source?

Note how steps 1 and 4 both ask about whether or not your chosen audience can digest this source.

Activity: Sources and Usefulness

Imagine you’re writing a paper about Artificial Intelligence. Below are the links to two sources. Which one do you use?

That’s a trick question: while you’d be right to pick the Nick Bostrom article (#2) for really credible, expert evidence, you might also use Wait But Why’s long, more accessible post (#1) as a source for more “layman’s terms” evidence, or even as a background source to increase your own understanding. Just because something isn’t “academic” doesn’t mean you can’t use or cite it in research. It just means you need to understand what a source is good for.

In fact, if you subject both sources to the STAR criteria, you can see how their main difference is in audience appeal, not their rigor, accuracy, or credibility. They have different kinds of credibility and different audiences, but both can be valuable in getting your point across.

Homework

You should prioritize the weird-topic blog post, but something to think about over the weekend is: what would you like to do your future research paper (P3) on, and therefore, what do you want to research for P2, the proposal?

On Canvas, there's a quiz for today, as well as a sample proposal (one of my old ones) and an instruction sheet for P2, the proposal. We'll talk more about this major assignment next week.

For various reasons, here’s some topics that are either overdone, over-simplistic, or that I find frustrating and boring:

GMOs are bad. (It’s more complicated than that. Your dog is a GMO. Chill.)
Abortion is bad. (I went to Catholic school for 12 years. I’ve had enough of this one.)
Concussions are bad. (Who are you informing? We know.)
The Nazis had a point, actually. (Who hurt you? Why are you like this?)
Climate Change is a liberal hoax. (ok boomer.)
Cell phones/social media are destroying society. (See #5.)
Climate Change is bad. (We know–pick a specific thing to talk about.)
We should change the drinking age. (Yes, but how? How is more interesting.)
People should stop being so political! (Politics is the consequence of human interaction--the fact that you think being political is a choice just means you grew up sheltered from the consequences of powerful people's whims. This is not a topic, it just proves you're privileged and don't know it.)
The media promotes unrealistic body standards. (We know. Also "the media" isn't a thing. They don't all conspire to do this--specific orgs do.)

None of these general areas are explicitly forbidden (except #4), but if you choose a related issue, be aware that the area is crowded with opinions and that you’ll need to develop a cool, specific angle or take on some sub-issue within the issue. That's an uphill walk.