American Studies 300: Final Project Guidelines
For this project you will apply the course’s essential
questions about American identities and culture to a topic of your choosing.
The topic may be contemporary or historical, or both. I want you to analyze a primary cultural
product(s) and put it into some kind of outside context. You should consider consulting at least
(could be more!) 4 to 5 sources, which includes both central and background sources.
The source base obviously will be determined by the type of topic you
choose. Sources may include materials
already assigned for this course.
Your project may be source-driven or narrative-driven, or both. Source-driven means an analysis based on primary and/or secondary sources (e.g. novels, movies, music, scholarship, photography, maps, census data, political speeches, advertisements – the possibilities are endless.) Narrative-driven means incorporating your own story or stories of people you know into your project. Narrative-driven does not mean that you provide your overt personal response to a topic (avoid: “I think immigration restriction is wrong.”) Instead, narrative-driven is more like a testimonial that has meaning. You still need to consult other sources to put the narrative in context.
When approaching your topic, devise research questions such as: How does [my topic] reflect American values/identities? How is [my topic] shaped by (race, space, mobility, literacy/language, gender, ethnicity, religion, class, etc etc)? And you will of course come up with more topic-specific research questions.
The week of March 15 is set aside for individual conferences with me. At the conference, we will discuss your topic and ideas for sources. You will then turn in a project proposal for my approval, due March 22.
The Final Project counts for 35% of your final course grade. The 35% is broken down as follows:
1. “Process” = 10%
2. Oral Presentation to class (~7 minutes) = 5%
3. Final Product = 20% (due April 19)
The final product will feature a 7 to 9 page paper, and you may choose to incorporate other media as well (e.g. website, video, scrapbook).
Note: All components of the Project must be turned in on time. Missed conferences, presentations, and late proposals, drafts, final papers will incur penalties.