A research paper about the movie Get Out. It must include its Annotated Bibliography and a Proposal Paper.
Research Paper Instructions:
Get Out the movie as your research paper, choose to write about the film in one of the following ways: 1. Discuss the symbolism in the film and how it is used to portray Racism in America. This can include interpreting the film as an allegory for racism in America. There are many aspects which can be included such as “The Sunken Place” etc. 2. Discuss the actual historical events or aspects of racism in America that the film alludes to. 3. Discuss how the film portrays different types of racism in America such as Institutionalized Racism, Structural Racism, Microaggressions, etc. In order to weave research with the paper, please include actual occurrences in history and present society. This is to be included with all three topics.
Requirements:
- Essays must be 2.5-4 pages long.
- Essays must include 4 outside sources. Sources can be print or from the MDC databases. Sources can be from the internet, so long as they are reliable resources.
- Source material must be properly incorporated and properly cited, following MLA formatting guidelines and rules.
- There must be a balance between the piece of media chosen and the research presented. Thoughtful analysis must show how the two work together to support your thesis.
- Must include an Annotated Bibliography.
Annotated Bibliography Instructions:
Write an annotated bibliography that includes 3 scholarly sources and your primary source for a total of four.
Each annotation must include rhetorical information about the source (such as purpose, audience and genre), a summary of the source’s contents, and your own evaluation of that source for your research purposes.
An annotation is a summary and/or evaluation. Therefore, an annotated bibliography includes a summary and/or evaluation of each of the sources.
Each annotation should answer the following:
- It should be indicated if it is the primary source of your essay. If it is not your primary source, then there is not a need to indicate that it is your secondary source.
- You should summarize the source in 2-5 sentences. What is the genre of the source? Is it a nonfiction essay, historical fiction, statistical research, a sociology article? What are the main arguments? What is the point of this book or article? What topics are covered? If someone asked what this article/book is about, what would you say? The length of your annotations will determine how detailed your summary is.
- Assess whether or not this article is helpful for your paper. If it is not, then trash it. If you find it turns out that this was not a reliable resource, then trash it. Find another source. Think of how it compares to the other sources you used for your paper. For further tips on assessing whether a source is useful to your paper, please use the following link: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/553/03/
- Indicate how the source is used to write your paper. If it is the primary source, indicate which aspect of the source you are researching. Example: If you are using Angels in America as a means to discuss what the AIDS epidemic was like during the 80s, then explain that this is the particular aspect of the piece that you are investigating. If it is a secondary source, elaborate on how it helps establish your research paper. For example, if you are writing about the AIDS epidemic during the 80s, and your article has statistics of mortality rates due to the epidemic, then state you used the article for statistical evidence. Indicate how it shapes your argument in your paper.
Finally, please note that this assignment has a maximum as well as a minimum length; your bibliography must express all necessary information concisely, in such a way that it does not exceed the maximum length.
GRADING CRITERIA:
In grading this assignment, I’ll be asking the following questions:
-Does each annotation include useful information about its source? Does it summarize the source’s content?
-Does each annotation EXPLAIN how the sources are used for your paper?
Have you evaluated the source for its relevance and usefulness to your research?
-Are your annotations clearly and concisely written? Have you avoided confusing wordiness while still adopting
an appropriately formal tone for an annotated bibliography?
-Have you cited sources according to MLA conventions? Are your sources in alphabetical order?
FORMAT:
Each annotation should be double-spaced, but single-space the bibliographic entries themselves.
Each bibliographic entry should be formatted according to MLA standards, and should be followed by your annotation of it.
Proposal Paper Instructions:
Writing a proposal
The purpose writing a paper proposal is to give your professor, TA, and/or peers an opportunity to provide feedback on your topic, argument, and research goals. Perhaps most importantly, a paper proposal requires you to narrow your topic and begin formulating the argument you’ll make. Paper proposals help students by possibly redirecting you away from a potentially unworkable topic and toward one that is answerable in a quarter’s worth of research. The point is to avoid the problem of finding out too late that your topic/research question isn’t going to work. However, to make the exercise meaningful, you need to do at least some real research before you write your proposal.
- Description/Justification for your topic
- Introduce your topic and justify it. Given the possible universe of things to research, why did you choose this topic?
- How is your topic relevant to this course? That is, what themes or issues from the course will be central to your research?
- What is your Research Question?
- If the assignment gives you a research question, you should obviously use it. But perhaps use a paragraph to consider the significance of the question; what answering it might help make sense of or illustrate course themes; how your response might gesture toward larger, more generalizable phenomenon; etc.
- Writing a strong research question that is neither too narrow or too broad is actually quite challenging. It is essential to get feedback from your TA or Professor to ensure that your question is in the right range.
- For more empirical investigations, “why” questions are often a good place to start: for example, “Why did the UN support to creation of a Israeli state in 1948?” or “Why were Democrats able to pass healthcare reform in 2010?”
- For more theoretical investigations, questions might take a different form, such as “Do Socrates and Aristotle agree on the definition and content of virtue? What are the assumptions and implications of their definitions? Whose definition is better, and why?”
- Make sure that there are enough sources on your topic that you can actually do research: if you are having difficulty locating sources, you may want to consider changing your question.
- Thesis Statement: Your Answer to the Research Question
- You will need to do some research before you can even begin to offer an answer here. For your paper proposal, you just have to do enough research to figure out the puzzle that remains unanswered: that will be your research question, and given what you already know, you can formulate possible answers.
- How do you explain the outcome that you are considering? (This is the Dependent Variable. The DV is the thing that your IV is trying to explain.)
- How did the event/movement/legislation you’ve chosen effect future events? (This is the Independent Variable (IV), which is one of many potential causes. In the hard sciences, the IV is the thing that YOU have control over.)
- Should be brief – Make sure your thesis statement addresses your primary research (“why”) question. • Explain what you think happened and make sure to point toward causal mechanisms.
- Preview your argument
- Clarify what steps you will take to address your topic: identify sub-arguments you need to prove your larger argument true.
- Connect your theory to your examples – how will you measure things like corporate power or worker cooperation?
- Make sure that these steps will logically support the claim you make in your thesis statement.
- This should look like your outline in one paragraph – you are letting the reader in on how you’ve structured your argument.
Example of Proposal Paper
The Burgeoning of Convenience Stores Across the American Landscape”
by Janet Lerner
INTRODUCTION
In a little over two decades we have witnessed the emergence of a new concept in retail buying for the American consumer—the convenience store. The United States government defines convenience stores as “food retailer(s) of limited lines in a freestanding sales area of 3,000 square feet, concentrating on selected fast-moving products” (Directory of Supermarkets, Grocery, and Convenience Store Chains, 1990). To this definition I would add that typically the products on the shelves of convenience stores are priced higher than those carried by their competitors.
RATIONALE FOR MY INVESTIGATION
While spreading across the country like politicians on a campaign trail, convenience stores appear to have maintained a fairly distinctive regional character. Uni-Mart and Sheetz are common names for these stores in central Pennsylvania, but in Iowa we find Casey’s, in Massachusetts Cumberland Farms, and hundreds of other names specific to a state or region. I am intrigued by the rapid growth of convenience stores, which, from my early research, seem to retain a local flavor for such a widespread national phenomenon.
THESIS STATEMENT
“This is where the thesis statement is written.”
PROCEDURE
Through my library research, I will examine the burgeoning of convenience stores by exploring the answers to questions such as the following:
—How does the rapid growth of convenience stores reflect demographic trends?
—What determines the location of convenience stores? (macro-geography?)
—How have the unrelated markets of food retail and gasoline sales evolved into a common store?