this Bibliography assignment:
This assignment is small, but important to your grade. It allows me to see the topic and sources for your final paper, and give you early feedback, hopefully allowing for a better final paper and grade. It should begin with a sentence that describes your paper topic. It does not need to be a finished thesis at this point. This is followed by a list of 5 sources in bibliography format. After each source, include a sentence or two regarding the relevance of that source to your topic sentence. This bibliography theoretically doesn’t necessarily lock you into that topic, but I get a sense of what you are working on from the bibliography, and can help advise further research; changing topics loses that advantage.
A short guide to Bibliography format: http://peternulton.com/index.php/assignment-c/
Additional advice for the research paper, steps 1-4 are helpful for your biblipography: http://peternulton.com/index.php/assignment-a/
Final paper:
The paper for this class should be 5-7 double-spaced pages. It should deal with either a single work of art or architecture. Come up with a thesis about the work. Don’t be afraid to think critically: what do YOU think about the work? Support any claims with evidence. You should also look at your secondary sources critically. Do they disagree? Which one is more likely right in your opinion? Writing assignments are graded on the following criteria:
1) Choice of a suitable topic. Choose a narrow topic such as “The Hermes of Praxiteles,” “The East Frieze of the Parthenon,” or “The Eleusis Amphora.” That is, your topic should be on a specific artifact, monument, or building. Under no circumstances should there be a paper with a topic like “Roman Art” which is a difficult subject to do justice to in a full-length book, let alone a short paper!
2) Citation. Cite your sources. Any thought that is not original to your paper that cannot reasonably claimed to be common knowledge should have a footnote, endnote, or parenthetical citation. If you have no idea how to do this, please have a look at the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, or the Chicago Manual of Style, or my website here:
Example: The Parthenon is in Athens. (no citation needed) It is made of limestone and Pentelic marble. (no citation needed) It was made to communicate with aliens. (Here you either need to cite your source, or take responsibility for this goofy claim, and spend the rest of your paper defending it. Good luck with that.)
The existence of citations does not absolve you from needing to include a bibliography or list or works cited at the end.
(Please note that site, cite, and sight are different words with different meanings! archaeological site, website, cite a source, sight for sore eyes…)
3) Making and defending reasonable claims. If you have an original thesis, please try to show supporting evidence. This also covers critical use of sources. When an author makes an unusual claim, to what extent can they defend it? Some sources are better researched than others. Beware most internet sources. You might read Wikipedia but use it to find other sources. As it is “authorless” (crowd sourced authoring) and changing, it does not constitute a source in itself. If you need to rely on what you find online, try accessing JSTOR through the library website (with the bar code from your ID if you are using an off-campus computer).
Even then, read carefully and critically. This is often the way in which new discoveries are made. (Several of my publications, for example, are the result of a feeling of skepticism while reading articles or listening to lectures.)
Try to avoid random websites, or those not of scholarly intent. The paper for this course is to be around five pages in length. Try to have at least five sources. For such a short paper, your thesis need not be groundbreaking.
The paper is due by the Final Exam. (5/16)
If you still have questions about the paper: http://peternulton.com/index.php/assignment-a/
