Alan Green
Humanities
Cuyahoga Community College, Western Campus
Office Hours by appointment, mailbox in part time evening weekend office g111
Email:
[email protected]
Phone 216-903-7948 (c)
Writing a Prospectus Paper
A Prospectus paper in this class at least, is a preliminary statement for a final paper. It has two purposes. First, it gets you to think about your paper the night before it is due. Second, it lets the instructor see what you have in mind so that you can get help developing the question you want to ask, and direct you to some resources.
The prospectus is brief, about a page in length and contains some common elements:
The Prospectus needs to contain the topic, the question, and the thesis of the paper.
What's the difference?
Topic: The topic is the general area you want to write about. Examples of topics are things like "Poverty in America" or "Aids in America" or "The causes of WWII", or "The contributions of chuck close to American Art". Topics tend to be broad, and are like the "field" in which questions are asked.
Question: Topics are not questions. You ask a question within the area of the topic. One topic could have many questions associated with it. For example "AIDS in AMERICA" can have many questions. Such as What is the history of aids in America? How has the trauma of aids been communicated through art and music?
After developing a few possible questions you should analyze them. Think about the words that are being used and look them up even the easy ones. Reword the questions. Do whatever it takes to become as clear as possible about the question(s) you are asking.
It is important to learn to recognize the kinds of questions asked in a particular discipline. In the humanities, we tend to move across disciplines, but that does not mean that the questions don't draw on the resources of those disciplines.
Thesis: The Thesis is just the answer to the question. Good theses come from good questions. A poor thesis comes from an unclear question. This just need to be about a paragraph in length.
Bibliography: Give me an idea of the relevant sources you will use to write your paper. These should be scholarly sources.
The final paper may be different from the prospectus. This often happens, although if you want a completely new topic you should see the instructor first. Sometimes, the question you think you can ask turns out not to be a good one, or not to be answerable in a short amount of time, or vague, or uninteresting. You wouldn't know any of this if you started the paper the day before it is due. A prospectus allows some second thought, which is also a good idea in writing a paper.
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