Research Report

English 2013: Introduction to American Literature
Research Report Topics and Instructions

Assignment

Write a research report of 500-750 words on an approved topic. Your report should use MLA documentation style and cite at least three separate sources. Your report does not have to argue an analytic thesis. Your purpose is simply to present information clearly.

Topics

Review the list of topics below to see what is available. Send me an Email cbrucker@atu.edu in which you list your top three choices. I am going to let three people write about the same topic. I'll assign you to the highest choice that is still available.

Researching Your Topic

Once your topic is assigned, begin to gather information. You are required to use information from at least three sources. If you use Internet sources, be sure to copy down all of the information you will need when citing the source in your paper: the author or authoring organization, the title of the page, the title of site of which the page is a part, the date on which you accessed the page, the page complete URL (its Internet address). If you are taking notes from a printed source, remember to record author, title, publisher, place and date of publication, as well as the page number(s) from which you get specific information.

Click here for instructions for Guidelines for Conducting Research.

Models

Click here to read three research papers that were written in this course:

Plagiarism

Plagiarism, passing off someone else's work as your own, is a serious error that must be avoided. Your report will be submitted through Turnitin.com where it will be checked against a database of sources. A plagiarized report may receive a zero for the assignment.

Many people do not realize that copying even a few words or a distinctive phrase from a source is considered plagiarism.Developing good research methods and carefully documenting your information can prevent you from unintentionally plagiarizing your sources.

Writing the Report

Your report should be double-spaced. Use MLA documentation style. You will have parenthetical in-text citations to at least three separate sources and those sources will be listed alphabetically on the Works Cited list at the end of your paper. Refer to your freshman composition handbook for the specifics of formatting Works Cited entries. The Guidelines for Conducting Research that is included here May provide all the help that you need.

Be careful to proofread your report thoroughly. Grammatical and mechanical errors should be avoided. If you need some help, contact me. During the fall or spring semester you can stop by the Writing Center in WPN 365 during its hours of operation or make use of the Online Writing Lab.

At minimum, be sure that your Work Cited list

(1) is alphabetized by the author's last name or title that starts the entry:
(2) includes only sources that are cited in the text of your report:
(3) is overhung so that the name or title by which it is alphabetized stands out on the left margin.

Be sure that your in-text parenthetical citations:

(1) use the name or title by which the full source entry is alphabetized on your Works Cited list
(2) have Works Cited entries to which they refer
(3) are placed after the quotation or information from the reference.

Submitting the Report

When you have comnpleted your research report select the Submit Papers button on the left side of this course's main page and follow the instructions to upload your report. Note that your report will be automatically sent to Turnitin.com to check for similarities with other sources, so be sure that you are not using other people's words as though they are your own.

List of Topics

Available	Topic	Assigned Student(s)
yes	Stephen Crane and Literary Naturalism
yes	T. S. Eliot and Literary Modernism
yes	Colonel Robert Gould Shaw -- the white commander of the black 54th Massachusetts regiment who is memorialized in Lowell's "For the Union Dead."	Kevin Patterson
yes	Allen Ginsberg and the Beat Movement
yes	The Free-Soil Movement in Nineteenth-Century America [As Editor of the Evening Post William Cullen Bryant was an important supporter.]
yes	Stephen Crane's Career as a War Correspondent
yes	Edgar Allan Poe's Marriage to Virginia Clemm
yes	Thomas Morton's Conflict with the Puritans [Referenced in Hawthorne's "May-Pole of Merrymount" and in Jonathan Edwards' Of Plymouth Plantation pp. 102-105]
yes	Women's Place in Puritan America [Anne Bradstreet]	Grace Nicholson
yes	Nathaniel Hawthorne's Friendship with President Franklin Pierce
yes	Thoreau's Opposition to the Mexican War
yes	Frances Wright. [The deistic novel A Few Days in Athens written by this early feminist and free-thinker was one of Walt Whitman's childhood favorites.]
yes	Ralph Waldo Emerson's Career as a Preacher (1826-1832)
yes	Lyceums in Nineteenth Century America [Emerson was popular on the public-lecture circuit.]
yes	James Fenimore Cooper's Bread and Cheese Club [William Cullen Bryant was a member.]
yes	Margaret Fuller's View of Women in Nineteenth Century America	Kate Odem
no	Margaret Fuller's Death	Searira Chavis
yes	Thoreau's Friendship with Emerson	Kirsyn Myers
yes	Banned in Boston: the Censorship of Whitman's Leaves of Grass	Tawni Bacorn
yes	Walt Whitman's Service During the Civil War	Katelyn Eblen
yes	William Cullen Bryant's Political Views
yes	Nineteenth Century American Slave Narratives	Rachel Jones
yes	Scrivening in Nineteenth Century American Offices
yes	William Dean Howells and American Literary Realism
yes	The Tombs [New York City prison mentioned in Melville's story "Bartleby"]
yes	Emily Dickinson's Religious Beliefs	Madison Cowell Haley Webb
yes	Newspapers and the Spanish-American War [Crane's "The Open Boat" is based on his experience of the explosion of a ship smuggling munitions to Cuban rebels before the war. Howells "Editha" is about the mother and girlfriend of a man killed in the war.]
yes	American Labor Movement in the Nineteenth Century [Davis' "Life in the Iron Mills" describes conditions that led to the development of the American labor movement in the late nineteenth century.]
yes	Jack London and the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-98	Lauren Littleton Olivia Lawton
yes	Claude McKay and the Race Riots of 1919 ["If We Must Die"]	Brooklyn Haney
yes	Lynching in the Twentieth-Century South [Baldwin's "Going to Meet the Man" and McKay's "Lynching"]
yes	W. E. B. DuBois [A reference to this famous black leader is made in Michael Harper's "Deathwatch."]
yes	Robert Frost's Years in England	Kaytlyn Myers
yes	Carl Sandburg's Political Beliefs
yes	Chinese Immigration to the United States [Maxine Hong Kingston's and Li-Young Lee's parents immigrated fromn China]
yes	B-17 and B-24 Bombers in World War II [Randall Jarrell's "Death of the Ball Turret Gunner"]	Emiliano Torres Jonathan Murphy
yes	Robert Frost's Career as a Creative Writing Professor
no	Sylvia Plath's Suicide	Courtney Moore Cassidy Freeman Rian Kearney
yes	Edward Estlin Cumming's World War I Imprisonment in France
yes	Marriage in Puritan America
yes	Dr. S. Weir Mitchell [A version of the "rest cure" he advocated is portrayed in "The Yellow Wallpaper"]
yes	T.S. Eliot's decision to emigrate to England
yes	Southern slave codes and black codes in the 19th century	Kiaja Davis
yes	Ambrose Bierce's mysterious disappearance/death [The film Old Gringo gives a fictionalized account.]
yes	"Boston" marriages [Sarah Orne Jewett]
yes	America's literary expatriates in the 1920's ["Babylon Revisited']
yes	Allen Ginsberg's political activism	Anna Shepherd
yes	The persecution of British sympathizers (Tories) during the American Revolution. [Hawthorne's "My Kinsman, Major Molineaux"]
yes	The popularity and influence of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.
yes	Changing Divorce rates in the United States from 1950 to the Present [Updike's "Separating" and Cheever's "The Swimmer"]
yes	T.S. Eliot's emigration to England
yes	American Pacifism [The mother of the dead soldier in "Editha" expresses pacifist views that were not uncommon in the nineteenth century.]