Guidelines for Writing a Successful Humanities Research Paper on Gender

Expectations for Formal Research Papers

 Number pages on the top right corner. Do not put an extra space between paragraphs. Instead delineate a new paragraph by indenting five spaces. MLA formatting. Please refer to OWL Purdue for any questions regarding formatting, citations or works cited. Really. So helpful. It’s good on any other style as well. Protocols: This is a formal research paper. This means there are basic expectations that must be satisfied for it to be successful. Your paper must have a topic sentence at the beginning of your essay (and your opening paragraph) that clearly states what your topic is without any drama. It must also have a clear thesis statement at the end of the introductory paragraph that answers the question you choose to discuss, and states how you will discuss it. A Humanities essay always makes an argument or says something significant about what it is discussing. In general, an academic essay should always draw on at least three (3) academic sources. Your paper should quote material from the texts you use and be fully documented. Follow formal essay protocols. Topics: This course is examining concepts of male and female in the west, and so your research topic should be something about ideas of gender. Remember, you are not writing a social science paper, but a humanities paper, examining how ideas of gender appear, shape and/or are reproduced in culture. 1. Start by choosing an arena of interest to you where gender is present in high relief. It might be a particular genre of film, a particular film or a television series. It might be sport, fashion, a particular genre of music or even a series of popular magazine covers. It might be anime, You might examine ideas of gender in video games, for example, or gender in a particular genre of music, film, a favourite show or sporting event. Some examples: You could examine ideas of gender in a contemporary romance movie(s), comedy or drama. You could look at ideas of gender in Game of Thrones or a show of your choice. You could compare representations of male and female tennis players in sport magazines or other popular culture. What about ideas of gender in hip hop, rock or country? 2 Once you have an arena of interest, choose a more specific example for your analysis. You won’t be able to discuss every hip-hop song, but you might be able to find research articles on gender in hip-hop generally, that you might then apply to a more specific artist’s work for analysis. 3. Begin your research. Dig around in the library e-resources to see what you can find. Get familiar with Jstor, or Scholar’s Portal. Google Scholar is usually pretty helpful. You might find academic research on your specific example but more than likely you will be looking articles on your topic area. If you can’t find anything then change your topic. You are not required to do original work here. Develop your research question. What is it you want to know more about? Your thesis will evolve out of this question. Please be sure you are using proper peer-reviewed academic sources for your research. The library catalogue actually has a helpful indicator to let you know if what you are using is peer-reviewed. Include them properly cited in your proposal. Proposal: TAs will ask for a proposal, due January 28th, outlining your topic, your research question and possible argument, and your research material. Did I mention the research must be properly cited in MLA formatting? Note: we are not asking for a thesis statement here. You need to have done some research for that. But you need to think about your research question. That is VERY important. This proposal will not be marked, but if you don’t do it, your final paper will automatically lose 10 marks. You MUST do this component of the assignment and it must be done correctly. If it fails, do it again. In the case of failure we will tell you what is not working. We will not be giving feedback or otherwise evaluating unless there is a problem. For example, your proposal will fail if: - research sources are not proper academic, peer-reviewed sources, - ?research sources are not properly cited. Learn how to do this. - your topic is too broad or too narrow, or is not really appropriate, or is not doable. - Your research question is not well developed. I have also attached the proposal I had done by you and would like for you to use the 3 articles used in my proposal but also add more academic ones to use for the essay. I would like the same writer I had last time, my ID number for my last paper was 1554553, if I can get the same person that would be great