Researched Argument

For your term research project, you will explore a history of trauma, upheaval, tragedy, or oppression in your own family’s or own people’s (“people” defined as, those related to you ethnically, racially, religiously, or otherwise) background and discover what you understand to be the truth about it. You will then, in a paper, a webpage, and an oral argument, present that truth convincingly to different audiences, including an academic audience. In other words, you will have the opportunity to investigate in a serious way the legacy you have inherited and make your argument for the truth.

Examples of particular histories that might work for this assignment are: of immigration, of sexism, of religious oppression, of poverty, of war, of racism, of ethnic conflict, of torture, or of class discrimination.  Some of these may overlap; some may be deeply buried in denial; some might be causes and others effects; some might be shaping your experience in a way few even acknowledge.  All projects must attempt, in some way, to assign responsibility for what has happened.  

The purpose of this project is to create a version of history that is as true to you as to your academic audience; this means you will need to make a claim for truth that your audience would not automatically accept and then make an argument for its validity.  You might make a case for historical cause (why something happened the way it happened) or for historical responsibility (who or what is to blame for what happened).  You might make the case that something did happen that is not widely enough acknowledged as having happened at all or in the way you find it did. Or, you could make an argument for a particular significance of a historical event or condition.  Whichever specific purpose you choose to take, your task will then be to substantiate it with evidence.  To do this, you will compare the testimony you’ve gathered to other primary source data and to secondary sources data, choosing amongst this information for the best evidence to support your claim. 

Beginning with your interview assignment, you will find yourself in Artie’s [Maus] shoes doing fieldwork, interviewing “survivors” -- or witnesses anyway -- in your own family or seeking out others in your community who were in some way associated with the history you are exploring.  Following this direct contact with a witness, your library and internet research will corroborate and contextualize the story or stories you tell.

This project is not meant to expose you or to make you or your family feel exposed, although these feelings might be part of the process when probing sensitive subjects like these.  Recognize, however, that the alternative is silence and forgetting, and the possibility that your own history could be lost, just as Anja’s was in Maus, just as countless others have been because they were inconvenient or unpleasant or threatening to those in power to frame history.  Often the truth will require your acknowledgment that the victors’ version is not accurate.

Why Call It an Argument?

I would like you to think of your research project as a “researched argument” rather than a “research paper” because there is something static about the latter term.  It makes me think of a big garbage can, full of the information gathered from here and there and dumped into the can (usually in some organized way) for no particular reason other than that the writer had to get a grade by collecting and formatting data.  I think research can be much more exciting if you simply re-conceive of the process as one in which, more than simply gathering information about a subject, you are actively trying to find the best answer in the context of incompatible alternatives and then providing evidence for the validity of your claim.  Inspired by a stronger, better developed sense of why you are researching and writing, you will find your work to be more efficient and much more rewarding for you and persuasive to your reader.

Getting Started

Much of the work of this paper should happen before you ever start writing it. 

1. Choose a subject area that you are burning to know more about rather than one you simply know more about than others. 
2. Begin by doing the Interview assignment and follow your and the interviewee's interests to a specific line of inquiry that really sparks your enthusiasm to find out more. 
3. Then, read up on it; do web searches; collect bookmarks; read books, magazines, journals; talk to experts; and do whatever you need to gather enough info to take the next step.
4. Formulate a research question (using the guidelines in the next section), recognizing that it may evolve as you learn more and more through your research.  Once you have the basic subject area of your project in mind, narrow it down to an area that is specific enough to manage in such a short paper without spreading the butter too thin.  You can do this by asking questions.  For example, if your subject is “Peruvian rural poverty,”  you could ask, "What are the causes and consequences of Peruvian rural poverty?" 
5. Your answer, which represents the conclusion based on your research, could be: “During the 1980s, corrupt dictatorships and a depressed global soybean market resulted in devastating rural poverty in Peru; this in turn forced many thousands to migrate from their ancestral lands to the cities where they suffered from many social problems in addition to their poverty.”  You will find that the more you narrow the subject you intend to explore the more the subject can open up for you and the more engaged you will be with it.
6. Share your question (and its answer, the thesis claim) on the forum and in class.  Bring it to the thesis workshop.
   

Defining your Purpose by Asking the Right Questions

I would like to introduce to you six different question types, each of which will define a specific purpose for you, thus helping you decide what angles and evidence to look for in your research and, in writing your paper, which specifics to include. The “stasis” questions are types of questions that can be adapted to any subject or situation you are inquiring into. 

• Which of these questions separate your perspective from that of your audience? 
• Which of these questions represents the key difference(s) that, if overcome, will lead to consensus? 
• Which line of inquiry leads to a theory the reader can be convinced to accept?
• While it may be that all of the stasis questions stand between you and your intended audience, you are more likely to be successful if you limit your project by resolving only one of them.  
• By choosing just one central question you will avoid confusing your purpose and digressing or getting overwhelmed by the sheer volume and complexity of your data. 
• You need to define a selection principle for what goes in and what doesn’t.
  
  

Adapt several of the stasis questions to your subject matter and then choose amongst them for your overall argument and use some of the others to define subordinate sections of your larger argument.  For each, ask yourself, what do I need to know to answer this question as accurately, as fully, as ethically, and as persuasively as possible in the context of my audience?  Your answer will be your thesis, the controlling idea for the reasons/evidence/research you compile.

The Stasis Questions

1) Questions of fact arise from the reader's need to

know "Does this (whatever it is) exist?"

2) Questions of definition arise from the reader's

need to know "What is it?"

3) Questions of interpretation arise from the reader's

need to know "What does it signify?"

4) Questions of value arise from the reader's need to

know "Is it good?"

5) Questions of consequence arise from the reader's

need to know "will this cause that to happen?"

6) Questions of policy arise from the reader's need to

know "What should be done about it?"

Audience

Thinking about your audience is highly important here.  How much is your audience likely to already know and already care about you subject matter and question you will seek to answer?  An understanding of your audience will help you in determining the scope of your paper, the level of detail you can and must go into, and what you can assume or not assume about your audience’s preexisting beliefs.  In your prewriting you might want to define your audience—not just as a “general” one but specifically what salient qualities does it have? In some cases, your audience’s “need to know” will already be established while in most others your must first create this need by providing context and a clear description of the issue.

Introduction

In your introduction will need to provide your audience with whatever information, context, and definitions to establish your audience’s “need to know," thus drawing it into your argument.  Consider how much your intended audience already knows about your subject area?  How much info/context do you need to provide it with?

If you predict that your audience will have reservations, prejudices, counterarguments, different definitions, or blind spots, it makes sense to address them, if not up front, as some point in your paper.

Here you will also introduce yourself as writer. 
Your introduction should probably be the last part of the paper you write.

Thesis

Every effective piece of expository writing is about something, that is, it has a thesis or controlling idea, which is usually stated clearly and concisely in a thesis sentence.  A researched argument should strongly assert what the argument is about in one or two sentences.  This usually happens at the end of the introduction, however many paragraphs into the paper you are.  (Sometimes writers delay their thesis until the conclusion, but this only works if the paper is organized along a clear line of inquiry.)  The sentence should make clear what your claim is, why your audience should accept it, and how you plan to demonstrate it.  You should use strong subjects and descriptive active verbs in this sentence especially.

Organization

I strongly recommend that you compose an outline for this paper before you begin writing.  It’s much easier to make big structural changes when you see problems from a distance rather than from within the jungle of a first draft.  Section titles may be useful but they shouldn’t substitute for a reasoned overall structure for your argument.

Evidence

A persuasive argument about a historical event and its meaning requires strong evidence.  This can be gathered in from a mixture of primary and secondary sources.

Conclusion

Your conclusion should provide your reader with something to take away with him or her.  Sometimes this could be questions or directions for further inquiry.  Sometimes it might involve a summary of your major points and a final statement of your claim and reasons for believing your claim.  In any case it should not introduce new data that will go unanalyzed and it should not end on someone else’s ideas, in most cases. 

Avoiding Plagiarism

We will discuss this issue in class in greater detail, but here I wanted to make it explicit that I am aware of the temptation to borrow ideas from other sources—particularly off the Internet—in order to include them in your paper without giving credit to their authors.  Just cut and paste, coos Circe to Odysseus.  Anyone who gets caught doing this will be given an “F” on the paper.  Quote or paraphrase but always give credit.  Use MLA style for documentation.