PURPOSE: The purpose of the final paper is to help students develop solid, critical, analytical, and marketable skills that will also be useful in future classes, graduate school, jobs and life. In addition, students should also be able to reflect on—and discuss– both the power and the limitations of their final paper, as well as the relationship and applicability of their research to other research.
OBJECTIVE: Thinking and Researching Sociologically. Throughout this semester, you will be working on research that is related to advertising images and to one of the chapters that we are covering in the text. It will also involve your use of an on-line database of racial/ethnic advertising images. This database is part of a project on “Race, Ethnicity and Advertising in America 1890Today” that the Advertising Educational Foundation is developing. Fath Davis Ruffins, Curator of African American History and Culture, at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, is the project director. The database includes advertising images from the collections of the Archives Center of the National Museum and many other sources. Key ethnic groups included in the database are: African Americans, Asian Americans, European
Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, and Native American Indians. For your paper you will focus on the advertising images of one particular group, conduct a contemporary observation related to this group, research the group’s history in the US, and develop a research question that can be answered by using the database. You will formally present your paper, which should be 7 – 10 pages long, to the class at the end of the semester. Due dates on this and various steps to the final paper are indicated on the syllabus and also below in the “Time Line” section..
Although you will complete your paper in steps. throughout the semester you will work on and discuss with fellow students your research project. At different points in the course you will hand in assignments that represent different steps in the development of the research paper. The following highlights the major steps in constructing your paper. (See due dates below and on the syllabus.)
1. define your research question, first in draft form and then more formally;
2. consider the theoretical perspective and/or concepts you might want to incorporate to study your question;
3. conduct an observation of an event that involves your group; and advertising images of the group;
4. review a minimum of two scholarly, empirically-based articles relevant to your group and/or to your question;
5. consider what biases, problems or ethical issues you might encounter in carrying out your research; and
6. explain what you learned during (a) the interactive process of “thinking and researching sociologically” with your peers and (b) working with the database
As the syllabus indicates, a number of the writing and exercise assignments in this course will contribute to the construction of your paper. They are detailed below, along with the percentage that indicates how much each assignment will contribute to your final grade. As you will see, each component builds upon the previous component. The outline to be used for the Final Paper will be discussed in class. Since you will receive feedback from your peers, and from me, at each stage, you will have an opportunity to revise these components as you move toward the construction of your final paper. I will also schedule meetings with students throughout the semester to assist them in the construction of their paper.
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