PROJECT 4.1: PROJECT PROPOSAL
Before you start investigating the work of other critics and theorists, I ask that you submit a one-page project proposal. The steps of the proposal assignment are intended to help you find the position you want to take on the question or problem that will guide your research. The proposal-writing process should involve the following steps. What you turn in only need reflect steps 3, 5, 6, and 7. (Your exploratory writing is for you this time; you do not need to show it to me unless you want to.)
- Choose a text to write about.
- Quick write for 10 minutes about the text you are interested in exploring.
- Based on this quick write, compose a one-sentence description of a topic for a paper. Interesting topics tend to be those that look at ambiguous relations, tensions, or problems that arise among different aspects of the same work. For example: “My paper explores the connection between folklore in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and the complex structure of the novel’s narration.” Or “My paper examines the significance of the mixed-race character Daphne in Devil in a Blue Dress in relation to the gendered conventions of noir film.”
- Brainstorm a series of questions you can ask about this topic. You will want to make note of specific moments in the work that inspire these questions or that you think might be helpful in clarifying them.
- Choose one of these questions and develop it further by following the guidelines for formulating questions that we used for the problem paper. This question will serve as the tension or problem for your paper.
- In two to three sentences, begin to define the position you want to adopt on the problem, including reasoning.
- In a sentence or two, describe the part or parts of the paper topic that you want to investigate further and what kinds of texts might form a context for your discussion of the literary work or film.
- As you write your proposal, revisit your topic periodically to see whether you can make it more specific – even in little ways. For instance, you might revise the example from 3: “My paper examines the way the mixed-race character Daphne in Devil in a Blue Dress alters the gendered conventions of noir film.”