I. Topic Introduction (600+ words)
This section describes the problem, persuades your reader of its importance, and identifies some debates
surrounding it. After that, you’ll sketch out a potential direction for your research moving forward. You will
write a separate paragraph for each of the following questions, a-f (these paragraphs may be brief, but
you should have 1 paragraph for each):
a. Define your problem and explain what it is, whom it affects, and something about its causes.
b. Why are you addressing this topic? Why is this problem important? To whom?
c. Expert Conversations: Identify at least 1 area of debate, disagreement, or difference of
opinion among scholars and experts on your problem: What issues do they debate? How does
each side frame/understand the issue, and how does this framing affect the types of solutions
they propose?
d. What preliminary claims can you assert about your problem? (If you had to produce
something like a working thesis about how this problem could be addressed, what would you
say?). How do your ideas fit into the debate(s) you identified in paragraph (c)?
e. What are the main sources that you will employ to explore this problem and its potential
solutions? What makes these sources central to the scholarly or expert conversation surrounding
your issue? What makes these sources reliable?
f. Research Plans: What are the immediate challenges that your project presents for you? What
questions will you need to answer next?
II. Annotated Bibliography
As part of your initial research into your chosen problem, you will collect at least 6 sources (aim for 9-10
or more); you’re only required to cite at least 2 peer-reviewed scholarly books/articles/chapters in the
final product, but you’ll need to look through more sources than you cite. Your sources should include
peer-reviewed scholarly writing but may also draw from a variety of genres (news, longform journalism,
non-peer-reviewed books by experts, reports from nonprofit organizations, etc.). If you rely on short news
stories or non-expert publications, your writing and ideas will be general, weak, and poorly supported –
use these sparingly. Once you have chosen your sources, you should annotate them using the 6-point
formula below. Note: While you must annotate only the 6 minimum required sources, I encourage
you to annotate all the sources you include – doing so can only help you.
Annotation Formula
*1) Begin with the MLA-style works cited entry for your source.
2) Identify the author(s) (identity, relevant professional background or affiliations).
3) Source’s central argument or thesis (if this is not a secondary source, include an overview of its
contents).
4) What kinds of evidence are used to support the source’s central arguments (anecdotes, interviews,
citations of primary texts, statistical analysis?)
5) The source’s genre, audience, and purpose (is this a local news article meant to inform casual
readers or a peer-reviewed journal article written for an expert audience of students and scholars in a
particular field?)
*6) Evaluation: Spend some time explaining how this source relates to your larger project and how useful
(or not) it is. Spend time on critique and comparison: What are the uses and limitations of this source?
How does it compare to other sources on the same topic? Are you sure you should actually be using this