Overview

The following assignment asks you to write a paper based on research related to a specific aspect of  the global exchange of ideas, persons, or products across national borders that takes place or has taken place here in Southern California, in Orange County, or at UCI.  

You must choose a local person, object, artifact, document, form of discourse, organization, community, building, or environment and connect it to lectures by Professors Mailloux, Strasser, or Bruce-Novoa about global networks of exchange.  You should begin by formulating research questions.  What is the history of your topic?  Which ideological perspectives are already represented in the existing scholarship?  Where could new primary sources be located?  What original knowledge will you add to the field?  Your section leader may define the parameters of this research project further by asking you to focus on particular themes, topics, modes of representation, or scholarly materials. 

Whatever topic you choose, you will also be encouraged to work independently and to develop specific research goals related to your interests in a particular field or discipline that you plan to pursue at UCI.  You may find that a topic that relates to your family history, your cultural identity, your major, or your personal interests may help you get started.

A number of scholarly books and articles will be available on two-hour reserve at the library.  A guide of Library of Congress Subject Headings may also help you get started.  Bibliographies on different subjects related to this quarter of the course (missionary activities, slavery, immigration, transnational identity, architecture, religious studies, global studies, foodways, etc.) and on Orange County or California History may also be helpful for this project.  Librarians and LARC specialists will be available to help you with your research, but you must plan ahead, because appointments will fill up quickly.  A range of primary and secondary sources must be included in your research process.  You must close read texts that are primary sources (newspaper articles, government documents, letters, photographs, pamphlets, etc.).   Evaluating scholarly sources and paraphrasing academic arguments will also be a critical part of this project.

In developing and supporting your thesis with primary and secondary sources, it is likely that you will be using many logical and rhetorical techniques that you already know.  Specific paragraphs or segments of your paper should perform particular tasks in presenting your research and advancing your argument.  Identifying a specific purpose for a specific section of the paper will enable you to break down the project into more manageable tasks.  The following list may be useful in characterizing the strategies of academic discourse deployed by your essay:

• Definition of Terms
• Counterargument
• Rhetorical Analysis
• Image Analysis
• Narrative Analysis
• Textual Analysis (Close Reading a Passage)
• Textual Explication (Close Reading a Passage with a Focus on Ambiguity, Connotation, or Omission)
• Comparison and Contrast
• Application of One Text to Another
• Evaluation
• Causal Analysis

Your essay should be 8-10 pages and will count for 60% of your writing grade.   Preparatory work (which includes the annotated bibliography) is required for a passing grade.  Plan on cutting at least two pages of your rough draft in the course of writing this assignment.  If you don't start out with more material than you will eventually need, you will not be able to choose the most suitable claims and evidence for your final argument.

Steps in the Process

A research project consists of several distinct stages and depends on timely progress.  Consequently, this assignment will require you to complete and turn in various steps of the project separately.  In the Humanities Core Course, you have already learned about pre-writing and working drafts, but now you will be expected to document your research in accordance with scholarly conventions as your project develops.  Your work for each of the steps will be due according to the following schedule (as adapted by your instructor).

• Schedule:

• This isn't a policy paper, unlike the paper required in a parallel course at U.C. Irvine, Writing 39C or "Argument and Research."   You must use the methods of humanistic inquiry from disciplines such as history, literature, philosophy, or visual studies to analyze texts closely and make an interpretive claim about specific texts.  There are a wide range of primary sources that you can use for this assignment, including brochures, photographs, advertisements, song lyrics, buildings, and political cartoons.  But you can't just treat texts as a source for facts, you need to consider how texts create meaning through particular choices in imagery, language, logic, etc.
• It isn't enough to merely compare and contrast two cultural paradigms without addressing the central issue of global exchange.  Your paper must address the exchange of persons, products, or ideas, and there must be identifiable contact points to characterize forces of  influence, appropriation, collaboration, reaction, etc. at work.
• Some students confuse the global with the universal, so they focus on how Southern California exports products and ideas to the world (in a here, there, and everywhere sense) rather than identify particular countries, regions, or populations that participate in transnational exchanges with Southern California.  Try using a piece of paper to see if you can draw a diagram with your networks of exchange and locate specific nodes where production, transfer, interpretation, or consumption takes place. 
  

• Primary Sources:

1-2 texts that can be directly related to themes in the lectures or assigned readings of the course
1-3 additional primary sources 

• Secondary Sources:

1 scholarly book (Optional but Recommended: See the Library Reserve Collection)
1-2 articles copied from scholarly journals in the library -- NB: Be sure to return the volume to the orange shelves after you finish photocopying the pages so they can be reshelved for others to use.
1-4 articles from on-line journal collections at the library

• Demonstrate that you have done independent research
• Demonstrate that you have identified work by important experts and definitive texts in the field.
• Integrate textual analysis of primary and secondary sources.  You will want to choose the most relevant and scholarly sources possible and only cite as much as is necessary to support individual claims in your argument.
• Integrate multiple writing skills from the year-long curriculum of the Writer's Handbook.
• Cite all sources properly in the format specified by your section leader.
• Paraphrase the arguments of secondary sources.
• Acknowledge limitations in the evidence.
• Subordinate and juxtapose sentence elements properly.
• Keep the reader on track by means of clear signals, clear paragraphing, interesting topic sentences, and relevant evidence in the form of quotations from the text.

Thinking about Audience . . .

The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program at UCI publishes a journal in which exceptional student writing that observes the conventions of scholarly journal articles is published.  You may want to look at this journal online at http://www.urop.uci.edu to see work mentored by faculty members that was done by undergraduates in the humanities. Excellent HCC final research papers are also nominated for UROP prizes by their section leaders, so you should do your best written work to distinguish yourself among potential nominees.

Research Guide