The directions are below. I’ve attached the thesis statement and annotated bibliography I have already turned in.
Magic and Religion Final Paper Guidelines
Below are some tips and guidance for writing and structuring your final paper. Also see the attached Rubric for what constitutes a good research paper and a poor one.
Format/Grading
Please type your paper and double-space it. It should be between 5 and 10 pages.
Preferably upload it in Word format to Canvas. If you have problems then email it to me, but make sure you get a response that I received it, otherwise assume the internet ate it!
DO NOT SHARE GOOGLE DOCS! These always end up causing problems because students share a google webpage rather than the doc, and I’m unable to open it.
You will need to format your Works Cited page properly. Do not just list the URLS you used if you got sources online, but type them out in proper format (and include the URL at the end).
Also use proper, in paper citations. I do not care if you use MLA, APA or Footnotes.
I normally use Rubric similar to the attached to grade. I do not normally put a lot of emphasis in spelling and grammar, assuming you have just a few minor mistakes here or there. I’m more interested in the content.
You can format your paper along the lines of the research paper outline example from the draft portion of the assignment, or however, you are most comfortable with. Here are some other suggestions you can take into consideration.
Introduction and Thesis Statement
Central to this paper is a thesis statement. This paper is not simply just a report on other people’s work. It is meant to be a research paper where you are coming up with a thesis statement (or hypothesis) that you will support via research and sources. You should ideally introduce your thesis statement in your introduction. For your first draft your thesis may not be fully formed yet, or may change by the final draft. Along with your thesis statement, your introduction should be viewed as a summary or abstract of your paper. Highlight the type of data you gathered and analyzed, as well as other scholarly works of interest on your chosen topic.
Collection of Data
Some discussion of the nature of your data and how you gathered it can appear in your paper. If you interviewed people, how did you choose your subjects? How did you conduct your interviews, were they formal with a set of questions or informal? If you watched media or used works of fiction, how did you choose what you chose? Were there alternatives you could have used and did not? Why so?
Analysis of Data
The meat of your paper will likely come from the analysis of your collected data. You will probably want to enter into a discussion on what previous work has been done on the subject and how that influenced you and your analysis. Do you find you agreed with others, or disagree? How is your work building on or expanding the knowledge of this topic? Finally, how does your data support your thesis?
Conclusion
Your conclusion is a summary of your paper and its major findings, along with why it’s an important topic of research. You can also use it to discuss how your subject could be or should be further expanded by future research.
Data Appendixes
Should you choose to, you can include the data you gathered in an appendix. This could be interview transcripts, statics, song lyrics, etc. While you obviously want to use these in the body of your paper, sometimes it’s simply easier to point the reader to your appendixes for examples in order not to break up the flow of the text with overly long pieces of data.
Sources
For your sources, of which you need five, it is important that at least three of these are from physically written scholarly works, as opposed to websites, media or fiction. E-versions of written works, such as PDFs from databases like Jstor or reproduced articles posted online are acceptable. Ultimately you want to be able to cite academic work that has been done on your topic before or work that has influenced your thinking and analysis.
