Paper Proposals and Sources

Hi, there. I hope that you're all having a nice weekend. Kristina sent me some good questions and I thought that I'd share the answers with all of you, in case you're wondering about the same things...

She was wondering whether the paper proposals had to be formatted like a real paper, or more like bullet-points outlining your argument. The proposal can be somewhat bullet-pointed, but if you can send a draft of the paragraph that outlines your thesis & sub-points, that would be great, because it will allow me to give you more feedback up front.

She also asked whether your outside source(s) should be more theoretical (like those in the reader) or more directly related to the work about which you are writing. My first choice would be that you find something directly related to the work and use the theoretical texts we've read together for the intellectual grounding of your writing. But I realize that you may not be able to find somethng and, in any case, I certainly don't want to close you off from looking at other theoretical texts that interest you. So the choice is yours, as long as it meets those "serious source" standards I wrote about, on the handout.

Feel free to write to me with any other questions.