Guidelines for the Proposal A proposal offers a detailed and full description of your project (as best you know it at the time of writing) in no more than 2 pages. To succeed, students will need to find at least one source of information related to their topics. Students may work with their professors to identify areas of inquiry or may accept a topic and focus from the list. Understand that you are making a best effort to describe your project early on, but allow yourself to be open to growth and change as you conduct research and focus your intentions.Introduction/ThesisThere is a clear and focused introduction. The thesis is clear, original, and sophisticated. The ideas embedded in the thesis are appropriate to the length of the assignment (for the proposal 2-3; draft 1, 5-7; final, 9-10). Page count excludes title and reference pages). The content provides quality (not padded, dull writing, repetitive or margin/enlarged font-cheating). Effort and sensitivity to the study is evident.ParagraphsParagraphs are composed around topics, which naturally and organically emerge from a complex, focused, and sophisticated thesis. Each paragraph explores one topic and one topic only. Topics directly relate TO the thesis and are not theses in and of themselves. The paragraph completely and fully develops and explains the topic and provides details, examples, illustrations, and quotations from research as well as from the primary texts. Topics and paragraphs rise above commonplace thinking and summary. Quoted material is used powerfully to support analytical points (and not as padding). There is a graceful transition to the next paragraph. The ideas explored are significant, substantive, and instructive. Ideas/topics support the overarching thesis so that the paper is a unified whole, and not a concatenation of appended mini-essays.Grammar/Mechanics/StyleGrammar refers to the correct usage of Standard American English. Mechanics refers to idiomatic conventions (capitalization of proper nouns, spelling, and punctuation). Style refers to persuasiveness, sophistication, wit, and transcendant quality. Sentences should be varied in length and complexity without loss of clarity or precision of meaning. Style makes a paper a pleasure to read.FormatAPA format has been observed. Headers, margins (1″ all around), alignment, double-spacing, Times New Roman font and 12 pt. font size are correct. Pagination is in the upper right of the page. Citations are scrupulously observed in-text and have a matching full reference on a reference page with hanging indents (also formatted correctly—double spaced in TNR 12 point font) Both in-text and full references are complete according to the APA style sheet.Writing for the HumanitiesComposing for the humanities is “technical” in its own way. Students are to read broadly in philosophy, art, literature, political science, and history; and are to show that they can bridge conceptually across humanistic inquiry, innovate meanings that are not apparent at the surface of texts, locate controversies and conflicts that are worthy of researched exploration, and show depth and focus of contemplative thought and character in conducting work of this kind. Progress throughout these assignments is also valued.
