Part 1: Project Requirements
As the course syllabus indicates, all seniorseminars involve independent research. This semester, you are to complete a 6-8 page, double-spaced (12 point, standard font; excluding references and title pages) research paper. Keep the following in mind when preparing to write:
Papers must include course texts. Conduct bibliographic research to supplement your response to the question and/oryour point of view, but also consider making use of the fiction/non-fiction we have read to illustrate a point or an idea. Does a certain character exemplify your claim or social phenomenon? Does the way an author writes demonstrate your idea or data from a social/scientific investigation?
- reliable, and from reputable places. Does the source have an author? Has the piece been written for a recognized institution that must remain credible and accurate (eg: academic journal, news organization, government website)? To ensure this requirement for your source is met, avoid blogs, YouTube videos, articles without an author, and random websites publishing content that does not appear to be carefully researched. You must be able to evaluate the reliability and trustworthiness of your own source carefully.
- appropriate for a college-level paper. Dictonary.com, Wikipedia, and other encyclopedia-type sources may be helpful for you in starting your research, but these kinds of sources do not belong in college-level writing.
Part 2: Project Guidelines
OPTION 1: What is the biggest challenge faced by an increasingly interconnected, global world? What role do global citiesplay in the challenge – do they help? Or deepen the challenges, making situations worse? How have the texts assigned this semester helped to define, exemplify, or offer solutions for the challenge you’ve chosen to focus on for this project? In this paper, you should research and write about a challenge or problem, consider its relationship to global cities, and explain how it connects with texts we’ve read this semester. Refer to the general guidelines above to make sure your project meets the requirements.
OPTION 2: Visual arts – painting, sculpture, photography – can often convey feelings and perception about social issues. Globalization is no exception to this phenomenon, and in fact, various aspects of globalization have inspired many works of visual art. (Consider, for example, Gupta’s sculpture
introduced in our Module 1 video lecture (Links to an external site.)
, or
An Immigrant’s Journey (Links to an external site.)
, from Module 2, featuring photographs by John Moore!) In this paper, you should find examples of visual art that connect with ideas and texts presented through some of our coursework. It’s important to find a specific focus (ie migration, or poverty, or climate change, etc), drawing on our readings or videos to develop your discussion of it. Then, provide examples of visual art you researched, including images and your narrative description of how/why they’re connected to your focus. Note this paper should be slightly longer than the page count specified in the requirements to account for the inclusion of images!