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Paper Guidelines
2. This is an upper-level class, so I expect you to be able to write a creative and analytical paper based on your own research, your own observations, and your own critical thinking.
3. Since this is an upper-level class, I have left the exact content of the paper up to you. That is, I have not predetermined exactly what your focus will be. This provides you extreme flexibility and allows you to write on the subject(s) you are most interested in. It also puts the burden of responsibility for selecting an appropriate subject squarely on your shoulders.
4. Having given you this flexibility,
I nonetheless do have some requirements:
b) You must incorporate theoretical material (that is, material from our required and recommended readings, as well as any other oral historical work that bears specifically on your chosen topic).
c) You must incorporate research material (that is, material that reflects the research that you did, your group did, or members of other groups did). This includes material from your log, or daily/episodic journal, which may prove to be the most important resource for you.
d) You must incorporate material from your interviews (that is, specifically your taped interview, but also you may include material from your phone interview[s]).
e) You must adhere to professional
standards of presentation. I will stick to the grading system I used for
the Pilot Project, where I grade according to clarity, neatness, and presentational
quality (as parts of the Style component) and according to completeness
of material. In addition--and as the greatest part of the grade--I will
grade according to content and excellence of analysis. That is, I expect
you to increase the world's understanding of community and of urban life
through an explication of the oral historical research that you achieved
during this semester.
6. Since we have covered a lot of material
during this semester, keeping your paper to ten pages may be difficult.
You will have to choose a focus and work around that focus. Here are three
examples of what you could focus on:
b) an analysis of the inherent meanings embedded in the interview(s) you conducted, and what those meanings imply about the sense of community. For this, you would focus heavily on the words and the non-verbal communication of the narrator you covered, and you could correlate this with what you observed from other people's presentations or from your group presentation. You would incorporate research material from historical sources and you would incorporate theoretical material as well. You could focus narrowly on a specific theme or topic the person was interested in (or was not interested in)--for example, the MetroLink, or educational opportunities, or safety; or you could focus on a more general view of community as expressed by the person.
c) a critique of your own research.
For this, you would examine the best and the worst of your experiences
and your research data. This would not be an excuse for finding fault either
with yourself or with the project, but a way of thoughtfully examining
the processes involved, the time required, and the resources required;
and it would be an opportunity to suggest ways to improve both oral historical
research in general and this project (either as a class-based project or
as a Missouri Historical Society project) in particular.
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