sample research paper about humanities

The Value of the Humanities

• January 2015
• In book: Humanities World Report 2015 (pp.12-41)

• Trinity College Dublin

• Stockholm University

• University of Cumbria

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Organizing Research for Arts and Humanities Papers and Theses

• General Guide Information
• Developing a Topic
• What are Primary and Secondary Sources
• What are Scholarly and Non-Scholarly Sources
• Writing an Abstract
• Writing Academic Book Reviews
• Writing A Literature Review
• Using Images and other Media

Critical Engagement

Note: these recommendations are geared toward researchers in the arts or humanities.

Developing a research topic is an iterative process, even for a short paper. This is a process that emerges in stages, and one which requires critical (but not criticizing) engagement with the evidence, literature, and prior research. The evidence can be an object, an artifact, a historic event, an idea, a theoretical framework, or existing interpretations.

Ultimately, you want to be able to pose a research question that you will then investigate in your paper.

If you are writing a paper for a course, the initial critical ideas and theoretical frameworks may come from your course readings. Pay attention to footnotes and bibliographies in your readings, because they can help you identify other potential sources of information.

As you are thinking about your topic, consider what, if anything, has already been written. If a lot of literature exists on your topic, you will need to narrow your topic down, and decide how to make it interesting for your reader. Regurgitating or synthesizing what has already been said is very unlikely to be exciting both for you and for those who will be reading your wok. If there is little or no literature on your topic, you will need to think how to frame it so as to take advantage of existing theories in the discipline. You may also be able to take advantage of existing scholarship on related topics.

Types of Research Papers

There are two common types of research papers in the arts and humanities: expository and argumentative . In an expository paper you develop an idea or critical "reading" of something, and then support your idea or "reading" with evidence. In an argumentative essay you propose an argument or a framework to engage in a dialog with and to refute an existing interpretation, and provide evidence to support your argument/interpretation, as well as evidence to refute an existing argument/interpretation. For further elaboration on expository and argumentative papers, as well and for examples of both types of essays, check the book titled The Art of Writing About Art , co-authored by Suzanne Hudson and Nancy Noonan-Morrissey, originally published in 2001. Note that particular disciplines in the arts or humanities may have other specialized types of frameworks for research.

Also, remember that a research paper is not "merely an elaborately footnoted presentation of what a dozen scholars have already said about a topic; it is a thoughtful evaluation of the available evidence , and so is, finally, an expression of what the author [i.e., you] thinks the evidence adds up to." [Sylvan Barnet, A Short Guide to Writing About Art (New York: Pearson/Longman, 2005), 238-239.]

If you select a broad topic

If a lot has been written on your topic, perhaps you should consider the following:

• why are you interested in this topic?
• is there something specific you want to address?
• can you offer a different or a more nuanced interpretation?
• is there a specific theoretical or methodological perspective that you would like to apply?
• can you shed more light on specific evidence or detail(s)?
• review scholarship cited in the footnotes/bibliographies of your readings and see if there are lacunae you can address.

If you stick with a broad topic, you run into the danger of over-generalizing or summarizing existing scholarship, both of which have limited value in contemporary arts and humanities research papers. Summarizing is generally useful for providing background information, as well as for literature reviews. However, it should not constitute the bulk of your paper.

If you select a narrow or a very new topic

If you are interested in something very specific or very new, you may find that little has been written about it. You might even find that the same information gets repeated everywhere, because nothing else is available. Consider this an opportunity for you to do unique research, and think of the following:

• is there a broader or a related topic that you can investigate in order to circle back and hone in on your chosen topic?
• can your topic be critically examined within an existing theoretical or methodological framework?
• are you able to draw on another field of study to investigate your topic?
• review scholarship cited in the footnotes/bibliographies of the readings. - in other words, engage in citation chaining.
• if the pertinent readings you find are not scholarly (this is not necessarily a bad thing), evaluate how you can use them to develop a more scholarly and critical context for investigating your topic.

Citing sources

Remember to keep track of your sources, regardless of the stage of your research. The USC Libraries have an excellent guide to citation styles  and to citation management software . 

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• Next: What are Primary and Secondary Sources >>
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Home » Humanities Research – Types, Methods and Examples

Humanities Research – Types, Methods and Examples

Table of Contents

Humanities Research

Definition:

Humanities research is a systematic and critical investigation of human culture, values, beliefs, and practices, including the study of literature, philosophy, history, art, languages, religion, and other aspects of human experience.

Types of Humanities Research

Types of Humanities Research are as follows:

Historical Research

This type of research involves studying the past to understand how societies and cultures have evolved over time. Historical research may involve examining primary sources such as documents, artifacts, and other cultural products, as well as secondary sources such as scholarly articles and books.

Cultural Studies

This type of research involves examining the cultural expressions and practices of a particular society or community. Cultural studies may involve analyzing literature, art, music, film, and other forms of cultural production to understand their social and cultural significance.

Linguistics Research

This type of research involves studying language and its role in shaping cultural and social practices. Linguistics research may involve analyzing the structure and use of language, as well as its historical development and cultural variations.

Anthropological Research

This type of research involves studying human cultures and societies from a comparative and cross-cultural perspective. Anthropological research may involve ethnographic fieldwork, participant observation, interviews, and other qualitative research methods.

Philosophy Research

This type of research involves examining fundamental questions about the nature of reality, knowledge, morality, and other philosophical concepts. Philosophy research may involve analyzing philosophical texts, conducting thought experiments, and engaging in philosophical discourse.

Art History Research

This type of research involves studying the history and significance of art and visual culture. Art history research may involve analyzing the formal and aesthetic qualities of art, as well as its historical context and cultural significance.

Literary Studies Research

This type of research involves analyzing literature and other forms of written expression. Literary studies research may involve examining the formal and structural qualities of literature, as well as its historical and cultural context.

Digital Humanities Research

This type of research involves using digital technologies to study and analyze cultural artifacts and practices. Digital humanities research may involve analyzing large datasets, creating digital archives, and using computational methods to study cultural phenomena.

Data Collection Methods

Data Collection Methods in Humanities Research are as follows:

• Interviews : This method involves conducting face-to-face, phone or virtual interviews with individuals who are knowledgeable about the research topic. Interviews may be structured, semi-structured, or unstructured, depending on the research questions and objectives. Interviews are often used in qualitative research to gain in-depth insights and perspectives.
• Surveys : This method involves distributing questionnaires or surveys to a sample of individuals or groups. Surveys may be conducted in person, through the mail, or online. Surveys are often used in quantitative research to collect data on attitudes, behaviors, and other characteristics of a population.
• Observations : This method involves observing and recording behavior or events in a natural or controlled setting. Observations may be structured or unstructured, and may involve the use of audio or video recording equipment. Observations are often used in qualitative research to collect data on social practices and behaviors.
• Archival Research: This method involves collecting data from historical documents, artifacts, and other cultural products. Archival research may involve accessing physical archives or online databases. Archival research is often used in historical and cultural studies to study the past.
• Case Studies : This method involves examining a single case or a small number of cases in depth. Case studies may involve collecting data through interviews, observations, and archival research. Case studies are often used in cultural studies, anthropology, and sociology to understand specific social or cultural phenomena.
• Focus Groups : This method involves bringing together a small group of individuals to discuss a particular topic or issue. Focus groups may be conducted in person or online, and are often used in qualitative research to gain insights into social and cultural practices and attitudes.
• Participatory Action Research : This method involves engaging with individuals or communities in the research process, with the goal of promoting social change or addressing a specific social problem. Participatory action research may involve conducting focus groups, interviews, or surveys, as well as involving participants in data analysis and interpretation.

Data Analysis Methods

Some common data analysis methods used in humanities research:

• Content Analysis : This method involves analyzing the content of texts or cultural artifacts to identify patterns, themes, and meanings. Content analysis is often used in literary studies, media studies, and cultural studies to analyze the meanings and representations conveyed in cultural products.
• Discourse Analysis: This method involves analyzing the use of language and discourse to understand social and cultural practices and identities. Discourse analysis may involve analyzing the structure, meaning, and power dynamics of language and discourse in different social contexts.
• Narrative Analysis: This method involves analyzing the structure, content, and meaning of narratives in different cultural contexts. Narrative analysis may involve analyzing the themes, symbols, and narrative devices used in literary texts or other cultural products.
• Ethnographic Analysis : This method involves analyzing ethnographic data collected through participant observation, interviews, and other qualitative methods. Ethnographic analysis may involve identifying patterns and themes in the data, as well as interpreting the meaning and significance of social and cultural practices.
• Statistical Analysis: This method involves using statistical methods to analyze quantitative data collected through surveys or other quantitative methods. Statistical analysis may involve using descriptive statistics to describe the characteristics of the data, or inferential statistics to test hypotheses and make inferences about a population.
• Network Analysis: This method involves analyzing the structure and dynamics of social networks to understand social and cultural practices and relationships. Network analysis may involve analyzing patterns of social interaction, communication, and influence.
• Visual Analysis : This method involves analyzing visual data, such as images, photographs, and art, to understand their cultural and social significance. Visual analysis may involve analyzing the formal and aesthetic qualities of visual products, as well as their historical and cultural context.

Examples of Humanities Research

Some Examples of Humanities Research are as follows:

• Literary research on diversity and representation: Scholars of literature are exploring the representation of different groups in literature and how those representations have changed over time. They are also studying how literature can promote empathy and understanding across different cultures and communities.
• Philosophical research on ethics and technology: Philosophers are examining the ethical implications of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and biotechnology. They are asking questions about what it means to be human in a world where technology is becoming increasingly advanced.
• Anthropological research on cultural identity: Anthropologists are studying the ways in which culture shapes individual and collective identities. They are exploring how cultural practices and beliefs can shape social and political systems, as well as how individuals and communities resist or adapt to dominant cultural norms.
• Linguistic research on language and communication: Linguists are studying the ways in which language use and communication can impact social and political power dynamics. They are exploring how language can reinforce or challenge social hierarchies and how language use can reflect cultural values and norms.

How to Conduct Humanities Research

Conducting humanities research involves a number of steps, including:

• Define your research question or topic : Identify a question or topic that you want to explore in-depth. This can be a broad or narrow topic, depending on the scope of your research project.
• Conduct a literature review: Before beginning your research, read extensively on your topic. This will help you understand the existing scholarship and identify gaps in the literature that your research can address.
• Develop a research methodology: Determine the methods you will use to collect and analyze data, such as interviews, surveys, archival research, or textual analysis. Your methodology should be appropriate to your research question and topic.
• Collect data: Collect data using the methods you have chosen. This may involve conducting interviews, surveys, or archival research, or analyzing primary or secondary sources.
• Analyze data: Once you have collected data, analyze it using appropriate methods. This may involve coding, categorizing, or comparing data, or interpreting texts or other sources.
• Draw conclusions: Based on your analysis, draw conclusions about your research question or topic. These conclusions should be supported by your data and should contribute to existing scholarship.
• Communicate your findings : Communicate your findings through writing, presentations, or other forms of dissemination. Your work should be clearly written and accessible to a broad audience.

Applications of Humanities Research

Humanities research has many practical applications in various fields, including:

• Policy-making: Humanities research can inform policy-making by providing insights into social, cultural, and historical contexts. It can help policymakers understand the impact of policies on communities and identify potential unintended consequences.
• Education: Humanities research can inform curriculum development and pedagogy. It can provide insights into how to teach critical thinking, cross-cultural understanding, and communication skills.
• Cultural heritage preservation: Humanities research can help to preserve cultural heritage by documenting and analyzing cultural practices, traditions, and artifacts. It can also help to promote cultural tourism and support local economies.
• Business and industry: Humanities research can provide insights into consumer behavior, cultural preferences, and historical trends that can inform marketing, branding, and product design.
• Healthcare : Humanities research can contribute to the development of patient-centered healthcare by exploring the impact of social and cultural factors on health and illness. It can also help to promote cross-cultural understanding and empathy in healthcare settings.
• Social justice: Humanities research can contribute to social justice by providing insights into the experiences of marginalized communities, documenting historical injustices, and promoting cross-cultural understanding.

Purpose of Humanities Research

The purpose of humanities research is to deepen our understanding of human experience, culture, and history. Humanities research aims to explore the human condition and to provide insights into the diversity of human perspectives, values, and beliefs.

Humanities research can contribute to knowledge in various fields, including history, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and more. It can help us to understand how societies and cultures have evolved over time, how they have been shaped by various factors, and how they continue to change.

Humanities research also aims to promote critical thinking and creativity. It encourages us to question assumptions, to challenge dominant narratives, and to seek out new perspectives. Humanities research can help us to develop empathy and understanding for different cultures and communities, and to appreciate the richness and complexity of human experience.

Overall, the purpose of humanities research is to contribute to a deeper understanding of ourselves, our communities, and our world. It helps us to grapple with fundamental questions about the human experience and to develop the skills and insights needed to address the challenges of the future.

When to use Humanities Research

Humanities research can be used in various contexts where a deeper understanding of human experience, culture, and history is required. Here are some examples of when humanities research may be appropriate:

• Exploring social and cultural phenomena: Humanities research can be used to explore social and cultural phenomena such as art, literature, religion, and politics. It can help to understand how these phenomena have evolved over time and how they relate to broader social, cultural, and historical contexts.
• Understanding historical events: Humanities research can be used to understand historical events such as wars, revolutions, and social movements. It can provide insights into the motivations, experiences, and perspectives of the people involved, and help to contextualize these events within broader historical trends.
• Promoting cultural understanding : Humanities research can be used to promote cross-cultural understanding and to challenge stereotypes and biases. It can provide insights into the diversity of human experiences, values, and beliefs, and help to build empathy and mutual respect across different cultures and communities.
• Informing policy-making: Humanities research can be used to inform policy-making by providing insights into social, cultural, and historical contexts. It can help policymakers understand the impact of policies on communities and identify potential unintended consequences.
• Promoting innovation and creativity : Humanities research can be used to promote innovation and creativity in various fields. It can help to generate new ideas, perspectives, and approaches to complex problems, and to challenge conventional thinking and assumptions.

Characteristics of Humanities Research

Some of the key characteristics of humanities research:

• Focus on human experience: Humanities research focuses on the study of human experience, culture, and history. It aims to understand the human condition, explore human values and beliefs, and analyze the ways in which societies and cultures have evolved over time.
• Interpretive approach: Humanities research takes an interpretive approach to data analysis. It seeks to understand the meaning behind texts, artifacts, and cultural practices, and to explore the multiple perspectives and contexts that shape human experience.
• Contextualization : Humanities research emphasizes the importance of contextualization. It seeks to understand how social, cultural, and historical factors shape human experience, and to place individual phenomena within broader cultural and historical contexts.
• Subjectivity : Humanities research recognizes the subjective nature of human experience. It acknowledges that human values, beliefs, and experiences are shaped by individual perspectives, and that these perspectives can vary across cultures, communities, and time periods.
• Narrative analysis : Humanities research often uses narrative analysis to explore the stories, myths, and cultural narratives that shape human experience. It seeks to understand how these narratives are constructed, how they evolve over time, and how they influence individual and collective identity.
• Multi-disciplinary: Humanities research is often interdisciplinary, drawing on a range of disciplines such as history, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and more. It seeks to bring together different perspectives and approaches to understand complex human phenomena.

Advantages of Humanities Research

Some of the key advantages of humanities research:

• Promotes critical thinking: Humanities research encourages critical thinking by challenging assumptions and exploring different perspectives. It requires researchers to analyze and interpret complex texts, artifacts, and cultural practices, and to make connections between different phenomena.
• Enhances cultural understanding : Humanities research promotes cross-cultural understanding by exploring the diversity of human experiences, values, and beliefs. It helps to challenge stereotypes and biases and to build empathy and mutual respect across different cultures and communities.
• Builds historical awareness: Humanities research helps us to understand the historical context of current events and social issues. It provides insights into how societies and cultures have evolved over time and how they have been shaped by various factors, and helps us to contextualize current social, political, and cultural trends.
• Contributes to public discourse: Humanities research contributes to public discourse by providing insights into complex social, cultural, and historical phenomena. It helps to inform public policy and public debate by providing evidence-based analysis and insights into social issues and problems.
• Promotes creativity and innovation: Humanities research promotes creativity and innovation by challenging conventional thinking and assumptions. It encourages researchers to generate new ideas and perspectives and to explore alternative ways of understanding and addressing complex problems.
• Builds communication skills: Humanities research requires strong communication skills, including the ability to analyze and interpret complex texts, artifacts, and cultural practices, and to communicate findings and insights in a clear and compelling way.

Limitations of Humanities Research

Some of the key limitations of humanities research:

• Subjectivity: Humanities research relies heavily on interpretation and analysis, which are inherently subjective. Researchers bring their own perspectives, biases, and values to the analysis, which can affect the conclusions they draw.
• Lack of generalizability : Humanities research often focuses on specific texts, artifacts, or cultural practices, which can limit the generalizability of findings to other contexts. It is difficult to make broad generalizations based on limited samples, which can be a challenge when trying to draw broader conclusions.
• Limited quantitative data : Humanities research often relies on qualitative data, such as texts, images, and cultural practices, which can be difficult to quantify. This can make it difficult to conduct statistical analyses or to draw quantitative conclusions.
• Limited replicability: Humanities research often involves in-depth analysis of specific texts, artifacts, or cultural practices, which can make it difficult to replicate studies. This can make it challenging to test the validity of findings or to compare results across studies.
• Limited funding: Humanities research may not always receive the same level of funding as other types of research. This can make it challenging for researchers to conduct large-scale studies or to have access to the same resources as other researchers in different fields.
• Limited impact : Humanities research may not always have the same level of impact as research in other fields, particularly in terms of policy and practical applications. This can make it challenging for researchers to demonstrate the relevance and impact of their work.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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WashU Libraries

Conducting research.

• The Process
• Step 1: Exploring an idea
• Step 2: Finding background info.
• Step 3: Finding Print/E-Books
• Step 4: Finding Articles (Current Research)
• Step 5: Evaluating your sources
• Step 6: Citing your sources
• FAQs This link opens in a new window
• Library Vocabulary
• Research in the Humanities
• Research in the Social Sciences
• Research in the Sciences

Researching in the Humanities

The fields in the Humanities discipline generally include the visual and performing arts, philosophy, literature, religion, history, languages, art history, and classics.  Although research methods differ among the Humanities, the Social Sciences, and the Sciences, any research project in any discipline starts with curiosity and a hypothesis.  Often research topics are interdisciplinary and may include multiple subject areas and methods from more than just one discipline.

When beginning a research project in the humanities, you must develop a deep knowledge base in a subject area, choose original sources to examine, locate and evaluate sources that also explore your areas of interest, and then come to your own original conclusions. Libraries can help you find the material you need to get started.  The research guides listed on the right are created by WUSTL Subject Librarians.  Subject Librarians have expertise in both searching techniques and academic fields, and their online guides suggest resources for the different phases of the research process: 1) Use background sources to establish your knowledge base.  These could be subject encyclopedias, key works in a field, bibliographies, etc. 2) Select original sources, commonly referred to as primary sources, for your analysis.  Primary sources are simply original works, e.g., novels, photographs, diaries, correspondence, advertisements, eyewitness accounts. 3) Find articles, reviews, and books that analyze primary sources.  These are known as secondary sources. Then, synthesize all this information with your own thinking and draw your original conclusions, thus creating new research in the field.

If you need additional assistance, please reach out to one of the Subject Librarians.

• Find a Subject Librarian This is a list of the Subject Librarians by academic subject.

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Writing in Humanities: Do’s and Don’ts for Researchers

Academic writing in humanities plays a pivotal role in advancing the field and disseminating new ideas to a diverse global audience. With readers from various cultures and first languages, effective writing in humanities and sociology requires clarity, convention, and a structure that supports reader comprehension. To help researchers make their mark in influential international journals, we present five essential dos and five critical don’ts of effective academic writing in humanities and sociology to help researchers create a lucid narrative and showcase concepts that can strengthen your argument.

5 Dos to keep in mind when writing in humanities

Maintain focus on the problem statement.

When writing in humanities, remember to clearly state the aim of the study and the problem statement in the introduction, and refer back to this in later sections so that readers do not stray away from the key message.

Present relevant, interesting original work

Leading international journals will only publish work that is original and fills gaps in our current understanding. So, choose the topic of your research carefully to ensure your work is novel, relevant, and interesting.

Write in clear, concise, simple language

When writing in humanities, it’s always helpful to use short sentences that convey your message in a clear, easy-to-understand way. While you may be tempted to use technical jargon, steer clear of complex terms and convoluted phrases that can be confusing or even misleading for your audience.

Be aware of the target journal’s scope

Some journals focus on a certain aspect of the subject, while others publish work from related fields like anthropology, psychology, economics, political studies, and history. So, when writing in humanities, keep in mind the target journal’s scope, audience, and ensure your research can be understood by non-academics or peers from other fields.

Make your Abstract impactful and discoverable

Abstracts are perhaps the most important part of your manuscript and must be crafted with a lot of thought. Typically, keywords from the Abstract and research paper title are used to drive its success on search engines so use at least one phrase to indicate your problem statement, the methodological approach used and why it is important for readers and understand.

5 Don’ts when writing in humanities

Not including visuals to break the monotony of text.

Visuals are a great way to convey complex concepts at a glance, but these should be designed to clearly communicate ideas, without needing to refer to body text. Avoid complicated or ambiguous visuals, use high-definition images, include captions and legends, provide abbreviations and symbols where required, and appropriately cite copyrights, sources, or permissions.

Not adhering to ethical reporting guidelines

Academic writing in humanities often include human subjects, which requires appropriate permissions, ethical reporting, data sharing, and author identification. Adherence to the standards of the Declaration of Helsinki and the ASA’s Code of Ethics on informed consent is considered mandatory; neglecting to follow these ethical guidelines can be cause for manuscript rejection.

Not paying attention to analyses of results

Most reputed journals require authors to include an analysis of the study in the Discussion section; it is not enough to merely mention the validity of findings. This is a common reason for journal rejection among early career academics, who detail their findings and state the methods and approach but overlook this aspect in their humanities research paper.

Not addressing the limitations of the study

Humanities and sociology involve the study of human society and culture, with all its diversity and complexities. This makes it crucial to mention the limitations of your study in the final paragraphs of your humanities research paper to help readers understand the study’s purpose in the context of existing relevant international literature. Provide a brief summary of the issues you addressed, the restrictions your report uncovered, and how your research can benefit future studies in the field.

Not mentioning the impact and applications

Researchers aspire to conduct studies that are relevant and positively impacts our world, so when writing in humanities, highlight the value of your work. It is essential to explain why your study is relevant to readers and how it directly connects with existing themes and concepts. Highlighting your study’s potential applications, relevance and contribution allows readers to analyze your work from specific perspectives and understand its significance in the broader context.

Don’t miss the chance to learn more on how to write a good humanities research paper , where the writing style, structure, and presentation differs from other disciplines. And when you are writing in humanities, remember to write simply and clearly to connect with a diverse audience. By following the dos and avoiding the don’ts mentioned above, researchers writing in humanities can elevate their manuscripts, engage their readers, and leave a lasting impact on the field. Happy writing!

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writingxhumanities

A "how to" guide for UC Berkeley writers

Doing Research

In the humanities, as in the sciences, research begins with formulating a hypothesis about a subject and “testing” it out by engaging with evidence. But the nature of the evidence, the method of testing, and the kind of knowledge produced in humanities research differ from those in the sciences.

Rather than using quantitative or qualitative evidence as researchers do in the sciences, humanities researchers rely for evidence on their own close readings of primary and secondary texts. Whereas research in the sciences is grounded in the empirical method, humanities research uses a diverse array of methodologies, sometimes combining historical, conceptual, and/or critical methodologies in a single study. And instead of attempting to “prove” their hypotheses once and for all, humanities researchers develop arguments using their hypotheses in order to contribute and extend to ongoing critical conversations. These conversations themselves, one might say, constitute knowledge in the humanities.

Doing research into what has already been written about on your topic will allow you not only to situate your hypothesis within these conversations, but also to come up with questions that haven’t yet been asked. Through critical reading, you can identify gaps in previous writing on your topic and orient your own project to address these gaps if they seem like meaningful oversights. Your aim as a humanities researcher, then, is to develop a fuller understanding of your subject matter in dialogue with other scholars, and thus to move this ongoing conversation forward.

To develop a research question, you might start by making a bulleted list of topics or issues that you might want to pursue, based on your interests and the concerns of your course. When making this list, you should be expansive. Don’t limit yourself: your goal at this stage is to generate ideas, not evaluate them.

Next, you could try free-writing on the themes you see emerging from your list of potential topics. Are there any areas of interest that seem to repeat or echo? Can you start to create umbrella terms? Are you noticing friction within or between some of these concerns? These are just a few of the questions that may lead to a more focused line of investigation.  

Then, see if you can reframe your topic or theme as a research question by asking “How?” or “Why?” Keep in mind that your research question should be debatable and defendable : you may find that other scholars have very different points of view on this question or its answer. This is a good sign, and an invitation for you to step in and contribute to the scholarly discussion.

  Here are some helpful suggestions for broadening, narrowing, or otherwise tweaking a preliminary research topic so that you will be poised to write a well-focused essay.

And here is a concise overview that will guide you on the road to finding your research question . 

To engage fully with your secondary sources, you will need to read critically. But reading sources critically doesn’t necessarily mean disagreeing with them or reading them in a negative way. Rather, it means analyzing the details of an argument-driven piece of popular or scholarly writing that you may ultimately use towards fashioning your own argument. It means asking how these details reflect the assumptions, values, and stakes of the writer’s argument. Reading critically means navigating between doubting and believing what you read. 

When reading critically, we treat what we read less like objective, self-evident data and more like evidence being presented to persuade us of something. Sometimes it’s obvious that what we’re reading is trying to persuade us of something—think of an editorial that takes an explicitly controversial stance or a scholarly article that clearly signposts its position using phrases like “here I argue…” Other texts may make their arguments more subtly or indirectly. But either way, reading critically involves considering how the components and structure of the argument contribute to its actual or intended effect upon the reader.

One approach to reading critically is to investigate a text’s “ way of thinking .” Rather than reading simply for comprehension or information, you can also attend to a text’s claims, contexts, kinds of reasoning, and evidence in order to evaluate the effectiveness of its argument and to think about what you might add to the discussion or redirect it.  

Another approach involves asking questions about the relationship between the parts and the whole of an argument. These questions might address the role of pattern, process, sequence, causality, and other elements of argumentation and structure.

Here are some tips for reading secondary sources and some step-by-step exercises for reading critically.

Since you can’t write an interesting research paper without engaging with other scholars’ ideas, you’ll have to find secondary sources that are accurate and pertinent to your argument.

You’ll almost certainly want to start online, but the internet is an enormously complex—and just plain enormous!—compendium of resources. You can use Wikipedia to check out some basic facts and get some rough background information, but it’s not a reliable, scholarly source–see What’s Wrong With Wikipedia . Likewise, Googling, even using Google Scholar , can only get you so far, since there are valuable scholarly resources out there that are discoverable only by using humanities-specific Web directories ( Voice of the Shuttle , started in 1994, is the granddaddy of all online humanities research directories) and databases ( JSTOR , Project Muse , and the MLA International Bibliography , among others), along with the Berkeley library’s online catalogue .

Before you begin searching in a library catalog or journal database, familiarize yourself with using advanced search functions , such as “Boolean operators” (the basic ones are AND, OR, and NOT), truncation and wildcards (*, !, ?, or #), and keywords and subject headings. Here are some suggestions for coming up with searchable keywords .

You can read many of the sources (especially the articles) that you find through databases entirely online; you’ll need to track down other sources (like most books and book chapters) in the library. Once you’ve found a book in the library, take some time to scan nearby shelves for other books on the same topic that might not have come up in your catalog search. Also scan the bibliographies and footnotes of books and articles you’ve already found: these are great places to find more sources on your topic.

“Good” here means two different things: “good” as in relevant to your topic and useful for the kind of argument you’re making, but also “good” as in scholarly, reputable, and current. 

To determine the usefulness and relevance of a secondary source, begin by skimming it .  If the source at hand is an article, read the abstract. If it doesn’t have an abstract, read the opening paragraph, the section headings, and/or first sentences of a few of the body paragraphs, plus the concluding paragraph. If it is a book, read the blurb on the back cover, the table of contents, and the beginning and ending of the introduction and/or conclusion. From this quick but strategic dip into a secondary source, you should be able to glean something about its overall argument and whether it provides useful material for your own project. 

Remember: don’t discard a scholarly source just because it contradicts what you want to say. Do you disagree with its premises, its use of evidence, or its conclusions? Any of these points of disagreement might provide a foothold for advancing your own argument. Or if a secondary source does not address your primary text directly, does it put forth a theory or provide information that will help you to analyze your text?

Your quick dip into a source may also give you a feel for the quality of its scholarship. But there are also many concrete questions you can ask about a source to evaluate its reliability. What are the credentials of the author? Who is the publisher and the intended audience? When was it published? What sources does it cite? For a more detailed breakdown of ways to evaluate print and online sources, consult one or more of the following (reliable!) resources:

Evaluating Resources (UC Berkeley Library) Quality of Sources (Dartmouth College) Critically Analyzing Information Sources (Cornell University Library) Evaluating Web Pages (Cornell University Library) Evaluating Print vs. Internet Sources (Purdue OWL) Interpreting Sources (University of Michigan)

Skimming is a valuable reading technique. It can give you a general sense of what a  text is about, and it can help you to locate key arguments and passages relevant to your own research and writing. Skimming is also useful when you’re short on time. Let’s be honest: skimming is sometimes the only reading you have time to do!

But skimming does not mean speed-reading an entire text; zooming through a whole story or story at breakneck speed is, generally speaking, a waste of your time. Instead, skim strategically. Read the first and last pages of the whole work, and then read the beginning and ending of each chapter. Look for words, especially names, which appear repeatedly, dipping selectively into the text to get a sense of the style and “texture” of the writing.

Scholarly and critical texts, typically used as secondary sources, often have abstracts that give a summary of their main argument, and they also often have section headings, topic sentences, and transitions to guide readers through their discussion. Introductions are good places to look for roadmaps and thesis statements, while conclusions often summarize the whole argument. Focusing on these signposts will help you get the gist of an article or book without reading the whole thing in depth. These techniques are especially useful when your research turns up multiple secondary sources and you need to select the ones most relevant to your own topic. 

You can find some pointers on skimming in this very thorough set of instructions on How to Read a Book . 

Taking notes is an essential part of doing research. Obviously, the notes you take should provide a clear record of what you’ve read. But the very act of note-taking can help you to develop your thinking about your research question and ultimately to use evidence to support your argument.

To help yourself read secondary sources critically, you should take thorough but not overly detailed notes . Make sure to record key terms but don’t write out everything word for word; paraphrase whenever possible to make sure you have a grasp of relevant points; and don’t highlight or underline without also making marginal notes about the significance of the marked words or passages and any questions you might have about them. 

Make sure to include complete bibliographic data with your notes on each source so that you can retrace your steps if you end up needing to go back for more information or to check that you are quoting accurately. There are many different formats for note-taking—in the margins of the text or on Post-Its; on paper or in a Word document—and you’ll need to experiment to figure out what works best for you. You will also need to work out a good system for organizing and reviewing the notes you take. If you are juggling multiple sources, for example, consider using index cards or a citation management software ( Zotero and Mendeley are two popular ones) to organize and annotate your sources. You can even use these programs to generate properly formatted endnotes and Works Cited lists.

You can use your notes as the basis for an annotated bibliography ; here are some additional resources on writing annotated bibliographies.  Even if your instructor does not require you to produce a formal bibliography as a preliminary phase of your research paper, your own notes will still serve as the basis for situating and differentiating your own argument within a field of existing literature. Your notes should help you to take a strong, well-informed, and original stance in your writing. 

Research, like writing, is not a linear process. You will probably begin with a broad topic that will gradually become more focused over the course of your research and writing. You’ll then have to do additional research on this more focused and developed version of your original topic. Remember that the evolution of your topic depends not only on your reading but also on your writing throughout the research process. Such preliminary writing might include producing an annotated bibliography and/or a prospectus, as well as in less formal modes such as freewriting, mind mapping, outlining, and drafting.

The process of researching and refining, and researching and refining again, could go on endlessly, but don’t let it. You have to strike a balance between your responsibility as a researcher—citing and integrating the sources most relevant to your topic (not just the first three sources you find!)—and what is humanly possible. You can’t read every source ever written on your topic, and you shouldn’t. Remember that your goal is to develop and answer your specific research question. When you have a good sense of how your argument fits into the existing conversation, you can stop.

How do you know when enough is enough? Here are some diagnostic questions to help you answer the question: “When Can I Stop Researching?”

It’s not enough to use secondary sources merely for factual or historical information, although this is certainly one thing that sources can do for you. It’s also not enough to simply say “I agree” or “I disagree” with what other scholars have written, although this can be a starting place for developing a tentative research question and even a tentative thesis. Through thoughtful selection of and engagement with secondary sources, you can participate in ongoing critical conversations and even propel them in new directions. (Of course, the initial phases of your attempt to enter one of these conversations might reveal to you that you need to find different or additional sources!)

You might begin by considering how your sources are using their own sources . They probably cite other research to support their own claims (“Yes, and…”), to make a new claim instead (“No, because…”), or acknowledge other arguments in order to show a critical “gap” in the conversation, which their own argument will fill (“Although X and Y, nonetheless Z…”). In turn, you can use the specifics of their critical positioning to situate yourself in the discussion.

There are any number of ways of navigating secondary sources effectively , most of them involving either limited alignment or partial dissent. Some of these modes of engagement include adopting a term, adapting a theory, and changing the question, using moves that might be described as “picking a fight,” “drawing battle lines,” “piggybacking,” “leapfrogging,” and “matchmaking.” Here are two overviews of basic maneuvers and fundamental strategies for using secondary sources to develop an argument.

In order to effectively use your secondary sources to develop an argument, you need to clearly and gracefully integrate material from those sources into your sentences. Whether you paraphrase, quote, or summarize this material, you must fully signpost its relation to your argument, whether via limited alignment or focused dissent. As when you are making an argument about a primary text , you need to ensure that you are analyzing your source rather than leaving it undigested for your reader. Toward that end, there are a few things you should consider when integrating sources:

• Evaluate whether you need to quote, paraphrase, or summarize . Here are some tips on when and how to   summarize effectively. And here is some advice for determining whether   paraphrasing or quoting will best serve your purposes.
• When paraphrasing, be sure to do so accurately and fairly . You can practice this skill by doing this quick paraphrasing exercise . Just as when you quote word-for-word from a text, it is crucial to avoid plagiarizing when paraphrasing . For more information on avoiding plagiarism when quoting and paraphrasing, jump to the next section, “How do I responsibly cite my sources and avoid plagiarism?”
• Always be sure to Introduce, Cite, and Explain (“ICE,”for short) your evidence! Another way that you can ICE your evidence is by “sandwiching ” it between a claim and analysis, much as you would introduce and analyze a primary text.
• Familiarize yourself with guidelines about when quoting is most effective rhetorically and how to avoid quoting extraneous material . Determine which type of quotation —a block, spliced, or signaled quote—best suits your purposes.
• Before you submit your essay, be sure to review the   nuts and bolts of integrating source material into your prose, i ncluding using proper punctuation. Bonus: here’s a list of signal verbs and phrases to help you synthesize the words and ideas of other scholars.

Whenever you use language, ideas, or arguments from others, you need to cite them. The Berkeley Campus Student Code of Conduct frames improper citation as a form of academic misconduct —failure to cite one’s sources properly constitutes the theft of intellectual property. Plagiarism can make you subject to penalties ranging from failing an assignment to failing a course. Under some circumstances, suspension or even dismissal from the university may be imposed as a sanction.

Correct citation is not only a matter of personal and scholarly integrity. There’s another important reason to cite the arguments of other scholars who have written on your topic: citing them accurately and fully allows other scholars to track down those sources themselves . . . and it also allows you to check your own work. This practice might be compared to writing a detailed account of your experimental method in the sciences—citation is what gives research in the humanities its “replicability.” In sum, citation allows the scholarly conversation to continue moving forward. 

What counts as plagiarism? It can take a wide variety of forms, not just the act of submitting the work of another person as your own. Copying language directly from a source, like “patch-working” together sentences or paragraphs or ideas from multiple sources, is also plagiarism. And paraphrasing or rewording of sources without attribution can also be considered plagiarism. Even if you discover that a source makes the same point that you made first on your own, you still have to cite it! 

The easiest way to avoid plagiarism? If you’re in doubt about whether or not you should cite something, cite it! Accidental plagiarism is still considered plagiarism and is subject to the same repercussions. Keeping scrupulous notes throughout the research and writing process will help you to remember which ideas and phrasings are your own and which came directly from your sources. 

There are several different formats for citing sources; your instructor will tell you which style—MLA style, Chicago, style etc.—to use. For more details on MLA style, the most common citation format in the humanities, try the Purdue OWL or The MLA Style Center .

There is a wealth of resources–guides, grants, mentoring, awards, and more–for undergraduate research across the humanities at UC Berkeley. Here are some of the best-known ones, though you may be able to find others under the auspices of specific departments or programs.

You can begin searching for materials through the Library Guide to Research , which is organized by discipline or area of study. You can also find here the contact information for the particular UC Berkeley librarian who is an expert on research offerings in each subject area, and who can guide you to these resources. There are many research databases and subject-specific guides listed here under each heading. One that you won’t find listed there, A Guide to the Archive Resources of the Bay Area , lists some of the primary research offerings at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library and other university archives around the Bay. 

The Office of Undergraduate Research and Scholarships (OURS) is a clearing house for information about university-wide research grants and mentoring programs across the disciplines including the Haas Scholars Program , Student Mentoring and Research Teams (SMART), Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF), Underrepresented Researchers of Color (UROC), and Undergraduate Research Apprentices Project (URAP). They have databases with information about many other internal and external grants and programs, as well as offering help with finding and applying for these. Don’t forget to check with individual departments for major-specific prizes. UC Berkeley’s English Department, for example, offers travel grants for undergraduates to attend conferences and to do research at archives elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad. 

When your research is done or close to being finished (the submission deadline is in mid-April!), you should consider applying for the Library Prize for Undergraduate Research . 

For additional materials, go to  Teaching Research  in the  For Instructors  section of this website.

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UCI Humanities Core

Spring: Research Project

Research Paper Rubric

UCI Libraries Humanities Core Research Guide Exemplary Sample Projects by Past HumCore Students Appointments at the CEWC

After evaluating multiple primary sources and surveying the scholarly conversation that surrounds potential topics, select a primary source related to our cycle theme of Worldbuilding. Conduct extensive research on the topic, and then compose an expository academic paper that makes an argument about your chosen primary source’s humanistic significance. How does the form or genre of the primary source shape its meaning? How did the primary source come to make meaning, in what contexts, and for what audiences? How do other scholars understand and interpret this primary source or ones like it? How does your own humanistic interpretation of the primary source enter a larger scholarly conversation? What world does this primary source imagine and/or work toward enacting?

Your primary source and research questions must be approved by your seminar instructor. As part of the process, you will engage and collaborate with your seminar and program community and produce a series of prewriting and reflective components, including activities in your Digital Archive: the Research Log and the Multimodal Work-in-Progress. The required process-oriented assignments will be determined by your seminar instructor and must be completed in the order assigned. Your final Research Paper must incorporate and engage in depth with at least 6 scholarly, peer-reviewed articles or books and should be 10–12 pages (approximately 3500–4000 words).

Learning Goals

• Reinforce and hone compositional skills acquired to date in Humanities Core: to make specific, clear, arguable claims; to produce unified, cohesive body paragraphs; to integrate well-selected evidence from primary and scholarly secondary sources; to exhibit fluid transitions between ideas; and to develop a rhetorically-effective title, introduction, and conclusion
• Adopt the appropriate stance, style, and genre conventions of humanistic research-based writing as well as the methodology/methodologies relevant to the chosen primary source (e.g., cultural/ethnic studies, literary, visual, filmic and media studies, historical, and/or philosophical analysis)
• Demonstrate the capacity to critically survey, read, and assess primary sources and scholarly conversations across a variety of genres and media
• Demonstrate advanced information literacy skills by locating, evaluating, and integrating information gathered from multiple sources (the university library, online academic databases, and digitized archival collections) into a research project
• Produce accurate, rhetorically effective, multimodal communication using the appropriate genres, stance, and citational practices of scholarly digital media
• Develop flexible and ethically responsible strategies for generating, revising, and editing research writing and online multimodal compositions
• Reflect critically on the experience of research, writing, and multimodal communication

Required Reading

You may find it worthwhile to revisit the chapters and appendices you read in the Humanities Core Handbook during the fall and winter quarters as you conduct research and draft your paper. The following chapters cover the research process in general:

Stewart, Robin. “Determining the Topic of a Humanistic Research Project.” Humanities Core Handbook , XanEdu, 2022, pp. 191–203.

Connell, Christine. “Engaging in a Scholarly Conversation.” Humanities Core Handbook , XanEdu, 2022, pp. 241–56.

Morse, Susan. “Developing Titles, Introductions, and Conclusions in Research Writing.” Humanities Core Handbook , XanEdu, 2022, pp. 257–70.

Additionally, the Handbook includes chapters that walk you through the terminology and methods that humanistic scholars employ when analyzing genres of primary sources which we haven’t yet covered in lectures this year.

If you intend to research a work of philosophy, plan to read:

Siakel, Daniel. “Analyzing Arguments.” Humanities Core Handbook , XanEdu, 2022, pp. 75–86.

If you intend to research about a film, plan to read:

Buhanan, Kurt. “Analyzing Film.” Humanities Core Handbook , XanEdu, 2022, pp. 204–218.

If you intend to research a video game, plan to read:

Ruberg, Bo. “Analyzing Video Games.” Humanities Core Handbook , XanEdu, 2022, pp. 219–229.

If you intend to research a built environment, plan to read:

Broadbent, Philip. “Analyzing Built Environments.” Humanities Core Handbook , XanEdu, 2022, pp. 228–240.

The Writing Process and Your Audiences for this Project

As you can likely tell from the Learning Goals detailed above, the spring Research Project is an integrative and cumulative experience of the Humanities Core program as a whole. We hope that you can take the academic writing skills and tools of rhetorical, literary, visual, historical, and cultural studies analysis that you have developed in the past two quarters—as well as those you will learn this spring—and apply them to a topic that interests and excites you. We invite you to take an expansive view of what the theme of worldbuilding can mean and how it relates to the work we do in humanities disciplines, just as our lecturing faculty members have done. While some of your secondary sources might come from disciplines outside of the humanities, the majority of your sources should reflect the kinds of interpretive methodologies that you have been learning about over the course of the year.

Even more so than the other academic expository essays you have written this year, the research project is all about the process. In your seminar, you will be completing a range of scaffolded assignments that will help you to select a feasible topic, identify and engage with secondary sources, and generate your own interpretive intervention into a larger scholarly conversation. Along the way, you will be writing for multiple audiences. Many of the assignments you will undertake in this process are part of formal academic genres; for example, the prospectus is a formal proposal to an academic supervisor or committee (in this case, your seminar instructor) that your research is feasible and will produce a worthwhile contribution to a field of study. The audience for your research project is first and foremost your HumCore seminar and program community: you should anticipate working closely with other students in peer research groups as you explore your topic and build your ideas. You should also envision yourself addressing lecturing faculty members and your seminar instructor, in as much as they are also immersed in the humanistic study of Worldbuilding and thus represent a preliminary scholarly community for your ideas. Perhaps more importantly, you should imagine yourself addressing the scholars in the field or fields you will be exploring, interacting and arguing with them across space and time through your writing. While we certainly don’t expect that you will be an expert in your field by June (though you will certainly be able to identify who is!), you should anticipate that you will likely know much more about your particular topic by the end of the quarter than your seminar instructor.

Digital Archive Research Log

For the last two quarters of Humanities Core, you have engaged with texts and ideas discussed in lectures, readings, and events by archiving your own multimodal reactions and collections of thoughts on your Digital Archive. This quarter, during the process of researching and writing your Research Paper, you will build on your collection and share research log entries documenting and reflecting on your own worldbuilding journey as a budding researcher, with its challenges and successes.

First, think about the multimodal online genre you prefer for recording your reflections on one Research Log page of your Digital Archive. Options available to you include:

• An audio log, using your preferred app for recording your voice and embedding each recording on the page of your Google Site
• A video log, using your preferred app for recording video and embedding each recording on the page of your Google Site
• An illustrated log, or visual diary, using whatever physical or digital drawing materials you prefer and embedding (with a label or caption) on the page of your Google Site
• A webtext, combining various embedded (and properly cited) media with text you write

Each log entry should be about two minutes or the equivalent of 300 words long, and five entries are suggested. Your seminar instructor will instruct you in the expectations for your seminar.

Digital Archive Multimodal Work-in-Progress

As you near the last stages of your Research Paper, you will have the opportunity to share in the scholarly worldbuilding of Humanities Core by assembling and exchanging your in-progress research ideas with other students. The immediate “public” for this activity will be your Humanities Core seminar or, if arranged by your instructor, more than one Humanities Core seminar. As a culminating contribution to your collection of ideas on your Digital Archive, this activity should allow you to take advantage of the multimodal rhetorical skills you have developed this year with the aims of communicating your research ideas, your own contributions to scholarly conversations about worldbuilding, and your reflections on where your research progress has taken you; it will not be a final presentation since you will not have finished your Research Paper yet.

First, consider which online genre would best suit your research method or topic. Media modes available to you for showing your peers why your research is interesting include audio, video, images, and multimodal webtext. Whichever you select as most rhetorically effective, prepare to present your work-in-progress on one last page of your Digital Archive.

The content of your work-in-progress page, whether a short video essay, short audio essay, or multimodal webtext, should include the tentative title of your project, an introduction to the primary source and its context, an introduction to the scholarly conversation around the topic, an explanation of the methods and analytic concepts you are employing, and a thesis.

Your site visitors’ experience of your work-in-progress on your Digital Archive site (watching, listening, reading) should be about 5-10 minutes long. Be sure to update the navigation and homepage of your site so that the last page is easy to find.

Grade Allocation in Spring Writing Course

Your writing grade in Humanities Core this quarter will be allocated as follows:

The Work and Insights of Past HumCore Students

Many students find that the work they do in the spring quarter of Humanities Core inspires them to take additional coursework in a Humanities department. Humanities Core Research Projects have formed the foundation of many undergraduate honors theses. Past students have even reported that this project sparked their interest toward future graduate study. You can read award-winning examples from past cycles of Humanities Core on our Student Awards page ; be aware, however, that some past students were writing about a different theme than Worldbuilding and/or may have had different technical expectations in place for their projects.

The winners of last year’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program Awards will share their insights on this process with you at our Annual UROP/Humanities Core Research Symposium on April 14 (please see the Calendar page on the Canvas Lecture site for more information).

Posted 7 March 2023

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A Comprehensive Guide for Writing Research Papers: Humanities Edition

September 16, 2019

Megan Betancourt ’21

Open gallery

Welcome to college!  

Congrats on making it this far! You’ve spent the last year and a half or so of your life doing tedious research, going on campus tours, hunting down people who like you enough to write recommendation letters, filling out applications, having mental breakdowns and—most importantly—writing a college essay. Now, you’re probably thinking if that essay was good enough to get you into college, you must be pretty good at writing essays, right?

Fast forward a little bit. You’ve registered for a humanities class or two, and boom : you have a research paper due in two weeks. But you’re not worried because you had this on lock in high school: A three-part thesis, five paragraphs, add a little garlic for extra fragrance, sauté, and voilà! You have an A+ ! Or so you think, until you get maybe a B– , and in your unadulterated terror and confusion, you burst into your professor’s office and ask why your perfectly formulated essay garnered you anything less than an A . 

And that’s where they drop the bomb on you: your essay was too formulaic. Too mechanical. It looked *stock horror violins* like a high-school essay! 

You’re devastated. Your world has been shattered. Your academic career during K–12 has been a sham. You don’t even know who you are anymore. You mournfully tell them that your high-school education has stunted your essay-writing abilities and inflated your ego, and, in yet another moment of hubris, you ask if there’s anything you can do to change your grade. 

But there isn’t. There never is. 

Your professor patiently tries to explain to you exactly what went wrong, but you’re too panicked to take away anything from the conversation besides “don’t write like this.”  But you don’t know how else to write academic essays. You leave their office absolutely distraught and are frantically wondering, “How else am I supposed to write?” 

Since this exact scenario may or may not be coming from personal experience, I’m willing to bet that’s how you ended up at this nifty little article here. Well, maybe not that exact scenario (for your dignity and sanity’s sake, I hope not) but you are at least sitting with the question, “How do I write a college essay that doesn’t follow the three-part thesis, five-paragraph format?” As someone with several years of experience writing college essays who also had to throw out everything I thought I knew, I’d like to share with you some high-quality, gamer-approved, pro tips on the entire essay writing process. And when I say the entire process, I mean it. 

Time-management tips to help you the whole way

This probably goes without saying, but do try and keep deadlines in mind. Put them on your calendar; set a reminder—you know the drill. 

But turning something in by the deadline that you did during one all-nighter isn’t what I mean. That’s the complete opposite of time management. Instead, try to develop a sense of how long it takes you to get things done. Do you just galaxy brain the moment you open up Microsoft Word and crank out five pages in an hour and a half? Great!se the extra time to edit. Does your brain turn to TV static the moment you finish your MLA heading? That’s OK. Just make sure you get an early start and plan breaks so you don’t frustrate yourself. Again, timely does not mean all at once. If you know how long it takes you to accomplish certain tasks, you can fit working on your essay into your schedule better and won’t have to cram everything in at the last minute. It’ll feel like less of a gargantuan task if you spread the work out into smaller chunks over a longer period of time. 

Pick a topic

Although some professors may tell you exactly what they want you to write about, it’s more likely that you’ll be given a list of open-ended topics to choose from or you’ll be able to come up with your own topic as long as they approve it. This can be great for some people who are really enthusiastic about the class and have a lot of ideas already swimming around. For others, you can practically hear the crickets chirping while you stare blankly at your essay guidelines. Here are some ways you can strike a good balance between a fun and a practical paper:

• Again, make sure your topic is something you’re at least mildly interested in. It’ll make the writing process more enjoyable and make for a more compelling read. Readers, including your professor, can usually tell how much care went into a piece of writing, and that will go a long way regarding the reception of it.
• The types of sources your topic will need are usually pretty intuitive. For example, if you’re writing a critical response to a text, you’ll probably need to cite existing critical responses to back you up. Or if you’re writing about what it was like to live in a certain place at a certain time, some primary sources might be in order.
• Keep in mind the plausibility of there being available sources. Something super contemporary might not have a lot of existing research surrounding it, and what does exist might not be peer reviewed. 
• Keeping your question specific will help whittle down how much research you will need to do, but there is such a thing as too niche a topic (see above).
• Try to have a backup. Your topic might not be super researchable once you get to looking or might not be as interesting as you thought it would be.
• Run everything by your professor. They can provide good insight regarding the intrigue and researchability of your topic so you know whether you’re heading in the right direction before you invest too much time and effort.

The research

You’ve used the above information to help you formulate a professor-approved topic as well as a plan B. Now it’s time for you to hit Google and start gathering research. And while the old trick of using literally anything other than Wikipedia was enough in high school, you will likely encounter the phrase “peer reviewed” when looking at the source requirements for your paper. This means that you need to be looking for scholarly sources by experts that have been reviewed by other experts in that field. But how could you possibly know that?

The good news is that there are these incredible things known as academic databases that contain literally nothing but scholarly resources. You might actually be somewhat familiar with these if you ever used Google Scholar and found what you thought was the perfect source, only to click on the link and have the website tell you that you need to pay money if you want to read anything besides the abstract. Thankfully, full access to academic databases will usually be provided by your college. So now that you know where to look, here’s how to go about your research: 

• Make a list of keywords and keyphrases relating to your topic. This will come in handy because you usually won’t turn up many results if you type your question word for word into a database’s search bar. 
• JSTOR is your best friend. Just type in your keywords or keyphrase into the search bar, and you’ll be greeted with an almost overwhelming amount of results. You can narrow things down based on different types of sources: academic journal articles (usually the most abundant and most helpful), book chapters, research reports, and pamphlets. You can also search for content tagged by subject. Each search result will also have a list of topics, which is an additional set of keywords you can use for your research. You can also narrow it down to a range of publication years. Beyond being well organized, all sources on there are peer-reviewed, scholarly sources.
• Related to JSTOR, there is also a database called ARTSTOR that contains an immense library of visual media, from museum pieces to illustrations. Images are sources, too, and if you’re required to cite one, this is a great place to look.

Although databases like JSTOR are immensely helpful, there will inevitably come a moment when you need to find something that just isn’t there. The rest of the Internet obviously isn’t devoid of useful sources, but you will need to use a more discerning eye. 

• You’ve heard it from your teachers for years, and you’re going to hear it again from me: don’t use Wikipedia. However, it is not totally useless. Check the sources at the bottom of the article; there’s usually a hidden gem or two every now and again.
• Google Scholar isn’t just good for psyching you out by showing you sources that are behind a paywall. You can actually find a lot of book sources on there via Google Books. You may have to have books be a part of your citations, and if you can’t find a helpful one on JSTOR, you may just find it through Google Scholar.
• Websites ending in .gov or .edu will usually be more reliable because, as the extensions imply, they are run by government agencies or educational institutions. But, as with most things, caution and common sense must be exercised. 
• Lastly are things I like to call “metasources.” As with Wikipedia, this is where you look at the citations of another source. If you’ve found a source that’s already helpful, there’s a good chance it’ll send you in the direction of other good sources, which can be a great timesaver! 

Planning and outlining your paper (I’m begging you not to skip this step; please just hear me out)

I’m a big fan of outlining. I know some of you reading this have gotten into the habit of just opening up a Word document and just trucking along with your paper, and while I won’t stop you (although I absolutely cannot relate), I do want to champion the benefits that come with outlining. First and foremost, it’ll improve how your essay is organized. Your thoughts will already be in a logical order, and it’s easier to move paragraphs and ideas around before you end up writing a really good sentence you get attached to but just doesn’t fit anymore. Outlining also prevents or at least minimizes writer’s block. If you have an outline, you’ll always have at least somewhat of an idea about what’s coming next, and if you lose your train of thought while you’re writing, that’s OK—you’ll have the outline to reference! 

Now that you’re sold on the idea of outlining because why wouldn’t you be, how can you go about it?

• Often, a simple bulleted list will suffice. Just putting your ideas in the order you want to talk about them will strengthen the logical flow of your paper before you even begin drafting it. But if you’re a more visual person, put all of your ideas onto sticky notes and put them up on a board or wall. It’s extra easy to reorder things that way.
• Come up with your thesis. This is going to be the backbone of your paper, and everything you discuss needs to relate to it somehow. If your thesis is strong, it will usually be fairly easy to generate the rest of the paper. Decide on the kind of evidence you are going to provide to building on your thesis. This can be done by either referencing what kind of sources you’ll be citing or summarizing them. Briefly trace the steps you’ve taken to reach your claim. The body paragraphs will expand upon those steps.
• Run everything by your professor, especially your thesis statement. Just letting them know what you’re thinking of doing will go a long way in helping you plan a stronger paper before you start writing. After all, it’d be a real bummer if you came up with a thesis, wrote your whole essay around it, and asked your professor to look at your draft only for them to say it doesn’t work.

Actually writing

Now it’s time to write. But before you do, I’m going to let you in on what is probably the most important tip I can give you, especially in regards to combating the five-paragraph essay: Write organically! If you write in the way that comes most naturally to you, your authorial voice will be more present. There will be more of you in the paper, and it will make for a more interesting read and compelling argument. Give yourself room for creative freedom. 

Honestly, if that was your only takeaway from this guide, I’d be more than happy. I wish I had known that I was able to do this in the beginning, but sometimes we feel like we need permission to change the way we do things, especially when it comes to school. So for those of you who need it, I am not only giving you permission but even encouraging you to write how you want to write. 

Of course, writing a college essay isn’t just about putting heart into it;there’s some technique involved as well. The following advice, however, pertains mostly to my own preferred style. If you like, you can always try them on for size and see :

• Spice up your punctuation. Diversifying how you split up and deliver sentences will give you stronger control over the pacing of your essay. For example, if you want to deliver a particularly hard-hitting line, use an em dash (—). It’s sort of the written equivalent of a dramatic pause and can let your reader know you’re about to deliver some hot takes.
• Weave (properly cited) quotes into your own prose. You’ll know you’ve done it correctly when you read the paper aloud and it’s nearly impossible to distinguish quotations from your own writing. So rather than saying something like “according to ____” or “as stated by ____,” you write around the quoted material. This will improve the flow of your paper.  
• Put down the thesaurus! Purple prose will just distract from your ideas and come off as inauthentic. I know we all want to make Oscar Wilde proud, but your college essays aren’t the place to do it. 

You’re done! Except you’re not.

Now it’s time for my favorite part: proofreading. And, just like outlining, do not skip this step. I don’t care how good you think your paper is; I know you missed something: a skipped word, a misplaced apostrophe, a sentence that needs omitting. Even if you get to do an official rough draft and then a final draft, it’s better to take the sand-blaster to the rough draft and the glass file to the final draft than the other way around. It’ll save you a lot of time and frustration because I know it can be a little disheartening to get back a draft covered in red ink. 

• Put some distance between yourself and your work. You’re gonna get so used to reading the same thing over and over that you’ll start to miss stuff. Do whatever you need to to make it feel new again, whether that’s giving yourself a day away from it or playing around with the margins or font (let me tell you, reading something in Comic Sans is a whole different experience than Times New Roman; just remember to change fonts again before you turn it in).
• Not sure if that comma is in the right place? How do you use a semicolon? If you aren’t sure, look it up. Plenty of universities have online writing center resources with answers to these exact questions. 
• Read it aloud. Note any mistakes. Fix them. Read it aloud again. Repeat. Got a roommate or friend who will be a mildly tolerant audience? Even better. And yes, I know you’re going to feel weird doing it, but it is an absolute lifesaver and one of the best things you can do in the editing phase, and I will die standing on this hill. Read. It. Aloud. 

Bold of you to assume I was finished

The essay odyssey doesn’t end when you turn it in, and neither will I! So you’ve done all of the above, you got that paper written (congratulations!), and you finally, finally got it back from your professor, annnnnnd … it wasn’t the grade you were hoping for. Before I get into my spiel about coping with these kinds of things, here’s some quick advice on doing something productive with a less-than-ideal grade: 

• If you want to better understand why you got the grade you did, again, go to your professor’s office hours and talk to them about it. You’ll get a better understanding of what you can improve on. The rubric (if you get one) isn’t going to cover every little nuance of how they grade, so if you don’t know, ask.Save all of your work, regardless of the grade! Your professor’s constructive criticism and praise will be invaluable resources in improving all subsequent work and providing a little reassurance along the way. 

Granted, if you followed at least most of the suggestions here, your grade is probably going to be more than fine, but hey, these things happen, right? Maybe you misunderstood the prompt or couldn’t make time to go over it with other people. Maybe life got in the way, or it just didn’t quite come together. We can follow all the practical advice in the world but still just not be in the right headspace to write, and that’s OK. Your “best” isn’t a fixed measure of performanceL your “best” for one week may not be as good as your “best” the week before. Don’t stress over a B or a C– , especially if it’s the first paper you’ve written for that class. It took me a long time to figure that out. This isn’t just about breaking bad writing habits; it’s about breaking unhealthy habits about how we view our own productivity and success. So here are my final suggestions:

• Don’t be so hard on yourself.
• And remember: you’re always going to be a better writer by the last sentence than you were when you wrote the first. Develop good habits and practice, and there’s nothing you can do except improve.

Good luck, guys, and happy writing! 

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Jeffrey R. Wilson

• Aphorisms on Structure for Research Papers in the Humanities

Because of the infinite variety of approaches that can be taken and combined in a research paper, you may find you need to combine aspects from different structural models. 

Introduction

The Q-and-A

Paragraph 1: The Question

• Orientation
• Question/Problem1

Paragraph 2: The Literature Review

• Text Statement
• Critical Citations
• Question/Problem2

Paragraph 3: The Answer

• When to use : when your essay is built around analyzing a single text or topic. 
• Create a section break after the first paragraph. 
• Your literature review may very well be more than one paragraph.
• After the end of the introduction, create a section break, and start the body of the essay.

The Surface Reading / Closer Reading

Paragraph 1: The Literature Review

Paragraph 2: The Closer Reading

• Response (i.e., Question/Problem)
• When to use : when there’s a commonly accepted interpretation in a field that you’re going to oppose/complicate/develop; when you don’t have any fancy methodology (it’s just a straightforward close reading).

The New Phenomenon

Paragraph 1: Question/Problem 

• Textual Evidence

Paragraphs 2-?: The Literature Review 

• Historical Evidence
• Historical Citations

Paragraph 3: The Thesis

• When to use: when the text(s) and/or topic you’re addressing is so new that there hasn’t been any scholarly work on it.
• Your first paragraph should identify the text(s) you’re looking at and the question(s)/problem(s) you’re addressing.
• Since there hasn’t been any scholarship on your text(s), your literature review should address the tradition your topic grows out of / is the latest example of.
• In your literature review, the presentation of Historical Evidence (the things in the past that happened) and Historical Citations (scholars interpreting those things from the past) will be interwoven.
• Structure the literature review chronologically based on the Historical Evidence, peppering in Historical Citations as relevant. 
• It’s likely that this literature review will be longer than one paragraph, since there’s so much content to cover. Treat it like a body section.
• Your Question/Problem2 should address how this new phenomenon you’re addressing is different or may alter the conversations scholars are having about this tradition. 

The Abstract

Paragraph 1: The Argument

• Critical Citation(s)
• Method Statement
• Thesis Statement

Paragraph 2: The Roadmap

• When to use : when using lots of quantitative analysis (data, statistics, charts); when adopting a scientific rather than humanistic voice.
• One sentence per element, except…
• Maybe two sentences for Thesis.
• Maybe two-to-four sentences for Evidence.
• After the Roadmap Paragraph, create a section break and start the body of the essay.
• Since there’s not a full literature review in the introduction, make one of your body sections (early in the essay) a literature review.

The Exemplar

Paragraph 1: Exemplar Paragraph

Paragraph 2: Thesis Paragraph

Paragraph 3: The Literature Review

• When to use : when there’s a perfect, easy-to-understand illustration of your argument that can be covered in a paragraph.
• In the opening paragraph, instead of developing a question/problem, make a point.
• That point can then be extrapolated into your thesis.
• Include a section break after the Thesis Paragraph.
• Because you’ve already delivered your Thesis, your literature review should state at the beginning how your argument advances the scholarly conversation. 
• After the Literature review, create a section break and start the body of the essay.
• Because this introduction doesn’t identify the driving Question/Problem of the essay, make the first paragraph of the body a Question/Problem Paragraph: Orientation, Textual Evidence, Analysis, Question/Problem1

The Cannonball

Paragraph 1: The Thesis

Section 2: Question/Problem

Section 3: The Literature Review

Section 4: The Method

• Theoretical Citation(s)
• When to use: when you know that it’s going to take you multiple paragraphs to cover your question/problem, literature review, and/or method.
• Your first sentence is your thesis. 
• Since you immediately stated your thesis, you’ve got more leeway to develop the framing material in multiple paragraphs: your readers will stick with you because they know where it’s all going. 
• Because you’ve already delivered your thesis, your Question/Problem paragraphs can state at the beginning how your argument resolves the driving question. 
• Similarly, your literature review should state at the beginning how your argument advances the scholarly conversation. 
• In your essay, create a section break between each of these four sections.

The Stakes First

Paragraph 1: What’s at Stake

• Orientation to Stakes
• Evidence for Stakes
• Analysis for Stakes
• Question/Problem for Stakes

Paragraphs 2-?: Literature Review for the Stakes 

• Question/Problem2 

Paragraph 3: Method / Thesis

• Method / Text Statement

Paragraph 4: Question/Problem

Paragraph 5: Literature Review for the Text

• When to use : when you want to emphasize the implications of your argument; when writing a presentist essay.
• Start by laying out the Question/Problem that your Thesis is the answer to: not the problem in your text that needs interpretation, but a bigger-picture problem. That’s what’s at stake in this essay.
• That topic just introduced in the first paragraph then receives a literature review in the second: what previous scholarship has been done on that big-picture topic?
• Note that this introduction will have two literature reviews—one for the level of the stakes, and one for the level of the text. 
• The key sentence is the Method / Text Statement at the start of Paragraph 3. This is where you explain that the Question/Problem for Stakes can be resolved by turning to your text and argument. 
• Then deliver your Thesis. 
• Create a section break after your Thesis. 
• Next, establish your Question/Problem1 (why your text needs interpretation), since you haven’t yet done that. 
• Now provide a literature review of previous scholarship related to that Question/Problem1.
• Then create a section break and begin the body of the essay.

The Comparative Essay

Paragraph 1: The Situation

• Orientation to Text 1
• Orientation to Context 1
• Orientation to Context 2
• Orientation to Text 2

Paragraph 2: The Question

• Evidence from Text 1
• Evidence from Text 2  
• Question/Problem

Paragraph 4: Method and Thesis

• When to use : when using some shared feature of two texts to discuss some larger similarity or difference in context.
• Create a section break after the second paragraph, and another after the thesis.
• A comparative essay usually gives equal weight to both texts.
• In the body of the essay, don’t jump back and forth between your two texts in a single paragraph. It’s too disorienting for your reader to introduce new evidence and new analysis from two different texts all at once.
• Instead, cover your first text in full in a large section, then shift over to covering your second text in full in its own large section. That second large section may refer back to the analyses you did earlier. 

The Lens Essay

• Orientation Related to Target Text
• Evidence Related to Target Text
• Analysis Related to Target Text
• Question/Problem Related to Target Text

Paragraph 3: The Lens

• Theoretical Citations

Paragraph 4: The Thesis

• When to use : when you want to use one text (usually philosophical or theoretical) to explain what’s going on in another text usually (usually historical or artistic). 
• Create a section break after the first paragraph, and another after the thesis paragraph. 
• You can think of one of your texts as the “target text”—the thing being interpreted—and the other as a “helper text” that’s allowing you to do your interpretation.
• In all likelihood, the two texts involved in the essay will not receive equal weight (the target text will receive more attention, the helper text less).
• If it will take you more than one paragraph to provide an overview of your “helper text,” shift that material down to the start of the body of the essay. Still give a sentence or two in the introduction to your method, but then go straight into your thesis, saving the substance of your “helper text“ for the body. 
• In the body of the essay, as you unpack your “target text,“ you should return to specific ideas and rotations from your “helper text“ to enhance your analysis.

The Test-a-Theory Essay

Paragraph 1: The Prevailing Theory

• Orientation related to the Theory
• Evidence related to the Theory
• Analysis related to the Theory
• Question/Problem related to the Theory

Paragraph 3: The New Data Set

• Orientation to the Data Set

Paragraph 4: The New Theory

• When to use : when you want to use a new example or data set to challenge and older, established theory; when you want to develop a new, better theory. 
• If you fully endorse the theory at hand, don’t write a test a theory essay; write a lens essay that uses that theory to unpack evidence.

The Historicist Essay

Paragraph 3: The Context

• Orientation to Historical Text(s)
• When to use : when contextualizing a text in the circumstances that produced it will reveal a new understanding not available when simply looking at that text in isolation.
• Be sure to identify your “target text”—the thing being interpreted—and the “helper text(s)” being used to enhance your interpretation.

Paragraph 1: Your Argument

Paragraph 2: What’s at Stake

• Method/Text for the Implications
• Orientation for the Implications
• Evidence for the Implications
• Analysis for the Implications
• Question/Problem for the Implications

Paragraph 3-?: Literature Review for the Implications

• Critical Citations for the Implications
• Analysis of those Critical Citations
• Question/Problem2 for the Implications

Paragraph 4: Implications, Part I (The Idea)

• The Argument of the Implications

Paragraph 5: Implications, Part II (The Illustration)

• Evidence and Analysis supporting the Argument of the Implications
• Transition from the end of the body into the start by addressing the most compelling counter argument to your thesis.
• Responding to that counter – showing the error of his ways, describing how your position is ultimately more satisfactory – sets you up to synthesize together the totality of your main argument. Remember that an argument statement is different from a thesis statement: The thesis is a short, accessible, easy to understand, one or two sentence statement of your central idea; the argument is a summary of all the thinking and evidence that support your thesis, written out in a full paragraph.
• Transition from your argument to your implications by describing how the ideas presented in your argument bring with them the power to elucidate other things. That’s what you describe in the key sentence on your Method/Text for the Implications. 
• Your text for the Implications  is the topic thing being interpreted in your conclusion, which should be different the text Dash the thing being interpreted Dash in the overall essay. Your method for the implications is your description of how you’re using your argument to interpret that new text for the implications.
• Note that, if you spent significant time in the introduction developing what’s at stake, you don’t need to rehash that material in the conclusion. 
• After explaining how that you’re going to use your argument to interpret text your applications right a short question problem statement for the text of your implications. A little orientation, a little evidence, a little analysis, and then the question/problem that will be resolved by looking through the lens of your argument.
• Next comes Part I of your implications – the Idea. This is where you see rise your argument into abstract terms that are not bound to the specifics of the text from which it came. 
• Part II of your implications— The illustration –returns to some concrete examples to show your the idea in action.
• Aphorisms on Academic Writing
• Aphorisms on Rhetoric
• Aphorisms on the Writing Process
• Aphorisms on the Elements of Academic Argument
• Aphorisms on Structure
• Aphorisms on Structure for Single-Source Essays
• Aphorisms on Structure for Multi-Source Essays
• Aphorisms on Structure for Theoretical Papers in the Social Sciences
• Aphorisms on Structure for Empirical Papers
• Aphorisms on Outlines
• Aphorisms on Prose
• Aphorisms on Literature
• Aphorisms for the Social Sciences
• Aphorisms on Higher Education
• Other Handouts and Aids
• Sample Papers

Sample Abstract - Humanities

Memoirs of genocide: from poland to sudan.

Jasmine Angelini-Knoll Under the direction of Dr. Kenneth Waltzer, Jewish Studies Program

For this project, related to my research assistance for Dr. Kenneth Waltzer in his work on "The Rescue of Children and Youth in Buchenwald," I will look at several different memoirs rooted in experiences of mass violence undergone by children and youth. I want to draw parallels between memoirs of youthful survivors who lived through the Nazi Holocaust in Europe, and the “Lost Boys,” who survived recent violent conflict in Sudan. My sample of memoirs includes works in French by Polish Jewish boys who survived the Holocaust in ghettos and work camps, finally winding up in Buchenwald. The Sudanese memoirs trace the paths of boys as they fled from destroyed homes to refugee camps. They are written in English, often involving the collaboration of American authors. Besides engaging each story individually, the exploration of these works urges broader questions about memory of horrific violence. How is memory presented and organized in memoir? What is emphasized and why? What are the motivations for speaking as witnesses of horror and survivors of violence? What are the implications of personal memoir for the larger task of preventing violence and genocide? These stories are diverse—they take place in worlds and times apart, they involve different actors and contexts. Yet they are also connected, involving experiences by youth of mass violence, survival, and finally efforts to represent memory years later as warning, as remembrance, and as an effort to help others understand.

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