The final paragraph or two (at least) of the paper should be a discussion of your own personal biases related to the topic, and an observation of any changes that have occurred in your attitudes over the course of researching and writing the paper.
You are to write a paper examining a topic in the biology of women. Your topic must have both a biological and a social or cultural component. The purpose of this assignment is primarily for you to explore the connections between ideas in biology and social policies or cultural norms. An easy way to frame your topic is to make it a cross-cultural examination of a topic, or to relate it to changes in attitudes towards women over time. Diseases and their management, normal events in the lifecycle of human females, theories related to sex roles or morphology, or social policies with a biological basis are examples of categories of topics that are frequently chosen by students to fulfill this assignment.
It is expected that you will fully explain the biological idea or phenomenon, and that you will then display intellectual curiosity as you discuss its cultural/social significance. For some topics, an examination of how cultural/social ideas have affected the biological theories about the topic is also appropriate.
This paper is to be your own work. You should consult a range of resources. Use of primary resources is strongly encouraged. Books, journals, magazine articles, films, etc. are important resources, and should be included in your research as appropriate and available. All sources must be cited, including personal communications. Failure to properly cite sources may be interpreted as plagiarism, a form of cheating that will not be tolerated. You may use any standard form of citation, but need to include author name(s), date, title, URL for internet sources, publisher for written sources, and pages cited. Please be consistent in the form that you use and see me if you need more details about format for citations. Links to commonly used citation systems are in the course introductory materials.
The paper is to be turned in electronically as directed. There is no page requirement, but adequate coverage of the topic is essential. A typical paper is likely to be 12-15 pages, depending on font, spacing, and your writing style.
