Fall
2003
English 305A:
The English Novel 1700-1900
Fall
2003
Stephen
C. Behrendt
319 Andrews Hall
phone: 472-1806
office hours:
11:00 -
12:00 TR
and by appointment
James
Gillray, Humphrey's Shop
The Research Project Portfolio
For the portion of your course work represented by the "research project," I am going to ask you to prepare a portfolio of research materials – but NOT a typical, finished "term paper" – to satisfy this part of the course requirement. Please read on.
The "research project portfolio" is NOT meant to be a "paper" in the usual sense. I want you to spend your time working on research – on detective work, discovery, following the trails, finding new insights (and resources) – rather than on writing, so that you will be able to look at the largest and most diverse set of research materials possible. Your grade will reflect both the extent and sophistication of your research and the extent to which you suggest how all this work (and all these materials) could be made into a really good (and interesting) paper or project, if you had the time and leisure to create that paper or project in the usual way and to the fullest extent of your abilities.
In this respect, your portfolio should represent an expanded set of study notes that you develop by consulting various sorts of research sources. You may go on-line, of course (remembering that many on-line sites are only as reliable as the persons who set them up, and that many contain vast numbers of errors of fact and inference). Ideally, your portfolio should include at least 50% of its materials from traditional print or other "hard" media sources (photographic reproductions, etc.), so that less than half of the contents will be downloads from on-line sources. Think of the Research Project Portfolio as a personal (and personalized) documentation of your own individual, private research into a topic related both to this course and to your own particular personal and career interests and expertise.
You may choose any topic that interests you, so long as it is directly connected to any of the texts, authors, subjects, or contexts we are examining in this course. If you wish to run your topic by me to make sure that you are doing something appropriate, please feel free to do so.
You may want to begin thinking about your Research Project Portfolio by considering the following suggestions about what the finished Portfolio should contain:
1. a cover letter or introductory statement that explains the form, format, and substance of the Portfolio as a whole. It should say why you have chosen to follow the direction you have followed, what principles guided your research and your selection of materials to include, and what you see as the relationship among all these materials (including your reading notes) in terms of the sort of paper or other project that you might write or create from these materials. In practical terms, this statement should tell me what to expect in the Portfolio, including why the materials you have chosen are important, both for you personally and for the "picture" they help to draw of the subject you have chosen to examine. And (to repeat), it should briefly describe or explain the sort "finished product" you could create from these materials
2.a table of contents that identifies each component in the Portfolio in the order in which they appear.
3. a set of research and study materials that reflect your individual efforts better and more fully to understand the subject you have chosen as the focus for your research project. These materials may take many forms: essays and articles, visual materials, downloaded materials, original work, etc. For each item, you should provide the following information:
a. the exact source of the materials (give complete bibliographical citations for print and visual materials, complete URLs for Internet downloads);
b. a brief statement (a sentence is plenty, and it need not be a grammatically "complete" sentence, at that) explaining why you consider the selected item important enough -- or interesting enough -- for inclusion; and
c. another brief comment (as in "b," above) on the item's relation to the "angle" on the course you are developing in your own work and approach.
4. a relatively brief summary statement
that explains what the value of this entire Research Project Portfolio project
has been to you. What have you learned? What did you discover that you might
not have expected (including about your own interests and abilities)? What (if
any) additional questions or areas of inquiry have emerged that you have not
had time to pursue?
Submitting the Course Portfolio
Since our last class meeting is on Tuesday, 9 December, and our Final Examination
is on Tuesday, 16 December, I need to have your Research Project Portfolio no
later than Friday, 5 December, so that I will be able to return it to
you at our final meeting. I will be delighted if you can give me the portfolio
earlier than that, simply because it will give me additional time to read it
and see what you have done. But I really must have it no later
than Friday, December (the Friday before Dead Week).