One of the most important things you do this semester is to pick a topic, an issue, or a social event for your final paper. Most of the assignments we work on this semester will either contribute directly to your final paper or give you strategies and skills that will be useful for the final project. Because of this, it is very important that you pick a topic, an issue, or a social event that you will find interesting and that is rich enough to build your final project around.It is important that you follow the guidelines we established in class for choosing the topic, issue, or social event. Whatever topic you choose, you need to make sure that you can study it in the State College area. If your study involves multiple observations, you also must pick sites where the people of a subculture or an organization you wish to study will give you permission to hang around, take pictures, conduct interviews, make observations, etc. You MUST visit your field site and/or talk to them on the phone before you finish your proposal. You should not choose a site that is dangerous, difficult to access, too familiar to you, or too upsetting for you.For this assignment, you will write up a proposal for your research project, and the topic, issue, or social event will be approved by me. Requests to change topics during the semester due to outstanding circumstances will be considered on a case-by-case basis. However, because all of our work throughout the term will lead up to your final research paper, a topic change will necessitate rewriting all of the papers we have done to that point. For this reason, you should think carefully about the topic, issue, or social event that you propose.Goals for this assignmentTo gain practice in writing a research proposalTo analyze your preconceptions and biases about your chosen topicTo practice giving and receiving feedback on your writing and the writing of your classmatesTo initiate a preliminary inquiry into the topic that you’ve chosenThe document you will produceWrite a 3-4 page proposal on the topic you wish to study this semester. This paper MUST include:- A description of the issue or social event- The reasons you wish to study this topic- The preconceptions, assumptions, biases, and prior knowledge you have about this topic; please discuss at least two articles, scholarly or non-scholarly, related to this topic that you have read- The issues, problems, or larger concerns involved in studying this topic- The people you think would be “key informants,” interviewees, or subjects of survey for your paper
