Spring: Research Project
Digital Archive Research Presentation
In the previous two quarters of Humanities Core, you have engaged with texts and ideas discussed in lectures, readings, and events by articulating and archiving your reactions on your multimodal Digital Archive. This quarter, as you research and write a Research Paper on a worldbuilding topic of your choice, you will shift into a mode of independent discovery and sharing of your discoveries. Use the space provided by your Digital Archive to document the progress of your research work and reflect on your own worldbuilding journey as a budding Humanities scholar.
The Research Log section of your Digital Archive will include documentation of your thinking and working process as you explore your research topic. By taking advantage of the opportunity to incorporate links and by strategically choosing the modes best suited to convey what you’re thinking and doing in an engaging and convincing way (including visual, video, sound, or other media), you’ll also develop your ethos as an online academic writer and your skills in the online presentation of research.
Because this work on your Digital Archive will help you in the process toward your Research Paper, it will count toward the Research Process Writing Assignments component of your Writing Grade. (See the Research Project prompt for details on grade allocations this quarter.)
Note: Your seminar instructor may adapt the following suggested Research Log entries, so be sure to attend to your seminar syllabus.
Research Log 1: Evaluating Potential Primary Sources
This entry should offer a site visitor a viewing/listening/reading experience that is two-three minutes or the equivalent of 300-400 words long.
Having read the Research Project Prompt and reflected on what has sparked your interest in worldbuilding this year (in lectures, in seminar discussions, in your Digital Archive, in Friday Forums or a UCI Libraries workshop, in writing essays or reviewing for exams), what primary sources are you interested in potentially investigating? In this first entry, start your research journey by exploring two or three potential objects of analysis.
For help locating two or three primary sources, consult the Library Research Guide, especially the page on finding primary sources, and use the UC Library Search tool on the UCI Libraries home page. Try to identify primary sources of different types to widen your possibilities for different methodological approaches and research questions. Once you have identified potential primary sources, evaluate their potential by exploring the aspects listed below. Be sure to start recording any reliable sources of useful information on each primary source you encounter (for example, links to history or art history reference works you find on oxfordreference.com), and cite as well as link the sources for whatever images, videos, or other media you choose to include in this exploration.
For each potential primary source, collect and share what you know or can find out now about:
- the creator, title, and date of the primary source
- how you could access it in order to read/watch/listen to it closely
- the genre or medium
- the identity of the creator
- the primary source’s basic history and historical context, including intended audience and mode of circulation
- the primary source’s possible connection to the Worldbuilding theme
And reflect on and share what you think about:
- why each primary source interests you
- what specifically about each primary source you would like to understand or reveal, especially about how the primary source came to make meaning in particular contexts and how the genre, medium, or form of the primary source shapes its meaning (potential humanistic research questions)
- the methods of interpretation could you productively employ to understand or reveal something about each primary source (rhetorical analysis, art historical analysis, historical analysis, film analysis, other?)
Research Log 2: Determining a Topic and Learning from Others
This entry should offer a site visitor a viewing/listening/reading experience that is two-three minutes or the equivalent of 300-400 words long.
Decision time! What is your definitive topic selection, what are your provisional research questions, and how have you arrived at your decision? Think not only about what you discovered in your evaluation of potential primary sources and your survey of the scholarly landscape, but also about what you can learn from the Humanities Core community about the research process. Having attended or watched the recording of the Research Symposium, what insights did you glean from past successful HumCore student writers about topic selection, secondary source research, multimodal presentation, or any other aspect of the process? What have you learned from Prof. Fan and Prof. Ruberg this quarter about their own journeys as researchers? How do you anticipate applying what you have learned about research from your peers and professors? Do you identify with any of their experiences? How do you plan to handle any particular challenges of researching the topic that you can foresee?
Research Log 3: Proposing a Project
This entry should offer a site visitor a viewing/listening/reading experience that is at least two-three minutes or the equivalent of 300-400 words long.
As you’ve learned through your exploration of secondary sources, academic research (like other potentially worldbuilding projects) is not done by isolated individuals or synthesizing algorithms but grows and finds new paths through the contributions of many scholars in productive conversation. How do you see your primary source and foresee participating in the scholarly conversation around the topic you have defined? Use space on your Digital Archive to make a pitch for what you propose to explore in your Research Paper.
The ideas and plans that you map out in this proposal may eventually take you in unexpected directions, and your project will likely undergo substantial alteration during the drafting process. Nevertheless, the purpose of a pitch at this phase of the research process is to demonstrate to your seminar instructor and your research community that your project is both feasible and compelling, with the potential to spark further conversation. Pitching the project as your project means letting others hear from you, in your well-informed, academic voice, about your particular plan for joining a conversation.
To articulate and illustrate what you plan to do, consider:
- Your working title
How can you pitch the main topic of your research project in an engaging or intriguing way? - A concise introduction to the chosen topic
To invite others to see what you are seeing, how concisely can you explain the primary source(s) you will be analyzing and the topic or aspect on which your analysis will focus? How convincingly can you explain what is interesting and problematic about it, while demonstrating your knowledge about its context and medium or genre? - Your humanistic research questions and method(s)
How clearly can you articulate the humanistic research questions that you intend to answer through your interpretation of your selected primary source(s)?
What methods of disciplinary analysis (e.g., rhetorical, literary, visual, historical, cultural, etc.) will you apply in your analysis?
How can you give others an idea about what other scholars have said and how your project expands upon, differs from, or fills a gap in existing scholarly interpretations? What are the key debates you have identified? Why is your approach important? (Will you be placing multiple primary sources into conversation in your interpretation? Are you bringing a new primary source into scholarly discourse? Are you shedding light on a marginalized population or perspective? Are you applying a new conceptual or interpretive framework to an older context or primary source?) - Your interpretation
How can you pitch your tentative interpretation, or your first answers to your research questions, to invite others’ interest in your topic, to show that you have already done some interpretive work as well as research, and to demonstrate that you aim to make arguable claims that go beyond the obvious?
Whichever modes you choose to make your pitch, be sure to cite your sources and provide links for online media sources.
Research Log 4: Reflecting on Your HumCore Journey
This entry should offer a site visitor a viewing/listening/reading experience that is two-three minutes or the equivalent of 300-400 words long.
As you finalize your research paper and come to an end in your research journey (at least for now), reflect on the process as a whole. What have you learned about writing a Humanities Core research paper that you would like to share with future students? How have the lectures by Prof. Fan, Prof. Ruberg, and Prof. Betancourt made you think differently about the possibilities of scholarly research connected to the Worldbuilding theme? What understanding of worldbuilding have you critically and creatively constructed over this quarter and this year as a whole? And, considering what you wrote in your Digital Archive at the beginning of the year, what have you learned about yourself as a writer, researcher, and thinker?
