Week 1

Guidelines for Research Proposal #1

Choosing 3 Topics

Keep in mind that you are NOT writing a research PAPER this quarter.  You're just going on a research VOYAGE and sharing your journey with us in one presentation, during weeks ten.  Your first research proposal will just be 3 topics which you believe might worth that personal voyage as well as sharing with us.  After you send these three topics via webpage, don't stop working and thinking about it on your own.  By the end of week 3, we want you to have settled on a topic you're really, really interested in! 

            Some of you may have a topic in mind already.  That's great, but don't set your heart on it just yet.  Write it down, develop it a little, and then set it aside.  Now consider two alternatives seriously.  Some of you may be searching for a first topic, let alone a second and third.  Hopefully the process discussed here will be helpful to both groups. 

            A little sermon: your research should ideally be one of your passions.  It should be something you're really, really interested in.  By the end of the term, you should be able to consider yourself an expert in your chosen topic.  If you do so, you will find pleasure in the research process, great satisfaction in the result, and a lot of intellectual growth along the way. 

            Most of us are a little more ambivalent about academic pursuits than this, of course.  But even when you're slogging through dusty tomes (or websites) in search of some needed nugget of info, keep in mind that you are engaged in a noble pursuit, following the course of great minds who have changed history.  So may you.

            You are here partly because you're interested in the arts, language, history, politics, society and culture of China: music, dance, theatre; where various concepts, words, and characters come from; cultural forces such as family, institutions, communities.  Make a list of things that interest you in the field: occupations, areas, cities, time periods, art forms, styles, instruments, artists, social forces.  Now look some of them up, not with your mind made up, but with an open mind.  You are looking for ideas that interest you. 

Try ixquick or clusty (unlike google, they don't keep records of your searches).  Try the library's catalogue.  Try Summit (this catalogue includes all the items at UW, WSU, OSU, and U of O, among other schools-and you can get many of them within three days delivered to you here!  For free!).  Do a search of the NY Times, LA Times, or Washington Post website.  Find some articles pertaining to your interests.  Frequently this stage will lead to a change of topic, as you focus in on and think through the issues you're exploring. 

There are several articles on China in each of these newspapers each day in recent years! Popular magazines and newspapers vary widely in their quality, particularly in their reviews.  But interviews with artists are almost always worth looking up.  Arts coverage in the New York Times and other big daily papers can be very good, depending upon the writer.  Give them a try.  It's particularly interesting to go back a few years in the daily papers -- how have popular attitudes towards your subject changed over the past decade or two?

               Now you are keeping a research log.  This may become the biggest part of your portfolio (after class notes, of course).  What are you looking at?  What catches your eye?  As you research, what items interest you?  What are you still thinking about after you've left the library?  Don't let not finding material stop you cold; go back and try again to find materials, after thinking about possible new directions, asking for help (we have great reference librarians), or finding one or two books or articles that, when skimmed, point you in new directions. 

            At some point you'll be ready to move from reference sources to specific sources -- books and articles.  Books are long (you've probably noticed).  But almost all scholarly books can be summarized if you carefully scan (read rapidly, looking for main ideas) the preface, first chapter, conclusion, and bibliography.  Don't start with periodicals, but, when you're ready, become familiar with the major reference sources for scholarly articles: the Academic Elite, the International Index of Music Periodicals, Project Muse, and some others. 

After putting in at least a few hours of research, begin thinking about choosing topics.  Again, don't set your heart on one too soon -- make a list of several.  Don't worry if your topics are broad at first, but consider that a topic can seldom be too narrow.  Generally speaking, you need at least twenty sources, ten of them really germane, for a good research topic.  If you don't find enough on a given topic, you may have to broaden it.  But look harder before you give up on narrowing a topic.  In focus lies depth. 

        Even at this early stage, begin applying five criteria: focus in.  Who?  Where?  What time period?  What culture(s)?  What angle?  Don't forget to keep track of DATA, particularly interesting illustrations, examples, maps, diagrams, chronologies, charts, tables, or graphs.  You'll be needing some of those.  Keep in mind that seemingly dry tables of numbers can eloquently and forcefully support a point of view.

        Put another way, don't stop researching and reading until you've gone through a good big stack of stuff, and keep track of it all as you go.   If your list of potential topics hasn't grown, changed, and deepened a lot, or if you don't have a list of good potential references for each topic, go back and put in some more library time.  We have purposefully avoided giving examples thus far, because your topic should really be your own.  But if it is a help, here are some possible kinds of topics: "A Comparison of the Chinese and English words for ‘imperialism'", "Pianos in China," and "Mei Lanfang: international Chinese opera star."

        Have you talked to a reference librarian yet?  Go try it.  Have some fun.  We have a great library.  Take a cup of coffee in and hang out there for a while.  You'll be glad you did!