V. Piercy
Research Paper Requirements
Note well: Any research paper shorter than 1400 words and without the required number
of acceptable sources may receive a zero.
Consult the syllabus for draft and final copy due dates.
Topic
You may write on 1) Freud’s Dora case or on 2) Hamlet or on 3) “In A Grove” and the film
Rashomon. Your job will be to find what other scholars have said about the piece(s) in question
that you choose to discuss, and to integrate those ideas into your essay. Show that you can
conduct a scholarly investigation, conversation, and argument over some theme or idea intimately
connected to the work in question, a theme or idea of interest to you and the scholarly
community.
The purpose of this paper is to teach the following:




To better understand the work and its author(s)
To enhance research and library skills
To improve writing and language skills (handling arguments, usefulness of citation, quote
integration, and documentation)
To sharpen thinking processes—especially interpretation, evaluation, and synthesis of
other authors' words and ideas
Length

The essay must be a minimum of 1400 words (with a length of five to seven pages). (In
Microsoft Word, you can check your word count by clicking on the Tools menu and
choosing Word Count.)
Organization

The essay must be more than five paragraphs long. Make sure that you do not end up
with an essay with paragraphs that are too long; the rule of thumb is that paragraphs
should be no longer than a page. Therefore you should produce a paper in the 5-7 page
range.
Sources

Your Works Cited page must include a minimum of five academic secondary sources,
with at least one citation from each source. You may use some sources more than
others, but do not rely too heavily on a single source. That can skew your argument. In
addition, you should have a citation for the primary source—the play, case, or story and
film.
Guidelines for academic secondary sources:

Although you may cite them, Masterplots, Magill Surveys, Cliffs Notes, Monarch Notes,
Pink Monkey Notes, and other reading aids and supplements do NOT count as sources
because they are neither scholarly nor academic. Neither can you count general
encyclopedias such as Encarta, Wikipedia, or Compton’s, general reference sources
such as Bartlett’s Book of Familiar Quotations, short book reviews or the brief articles in
V. Piercy


general periodicals such as Time and Newsweek, or the Bible or some other primary
religious texts.
Do not get all of your sources from a single collection such as Twentieth Century Literary
Criticism or a single book of essays. Use a variety of sources. Also, cite only complete
sources, not abstracts, summaries, or short reviews.
Although you may cite Internet sources, you must be very careful to fully evaluate the
validity of the material because the literary criticism on the Internet is often poor and lacks
clear documentation. Therefore, you should use the Internet primarily to access
electronic databases to which a library subscribes, databases that contain material that
has been published elsewhere and, therefore, is more likely to have been peer reviewed,
written by people with academic credentials, and edited by professionals. Of the criticism
that is available in electronic form, no more than four of your sources may be
electronic sources. In other words, you may go to a library to find some printed books
and journals, but you can also use the library’s electronic databases.
Documentation

Use the Modern Language Association (MLA) documentation style. I recommend you
refer to Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) for a sample undergraduate paper
and up-to-date MLA guidelines and format.
Typing instructions



The final copy must be double-spaced with 1" margins.
Use 10 or 12 point typical font (use a recommended font such as Times New Roman-nothing weird such as Goudy Stout or curls or comic sans)
For an excellent overview of the different considerations when writing a research paper,
see our Literature textbook, chapter 9 pp. 210-243. Useful sample student research
papers are available at the end of that chapter.
Turnitin

In our Angel course is a Turnitin dropbox. You will need to upload your paper there. I will
give instruction in class on accessing our Angel and the Turnitin dropbox for our papers.
If the paper isn’t uploaded to Turnitin, I can only give it half credit.
Final copy

Staple together (in the upper left-hand corner) your final paper. Include a Works Cited
page.
EVALUATION: While there are grading sheets on our course site that provide more specific
information on evaluation, your final paper will be evaluated on whether or not the





content, organization, and style are effective.
grammar, mechanics, and form are correct.
sources are correctly quoted or adequately paraphrased and correctly documented. A
paper that contains inadequate paraphrasing or is missing parenthetical documentation
will receive no higher than a "C."
essay adequately supports the thesis. Paper has a thesis. Without a thesis a paper
cannot receive better than a “D.”
essay is the required length.
V. Piercy



essay actually uses the minimum number of secondary sources (rather than merely
listing them on the Works Cited page).
essay shows original thinking, demonstrated in part by passages from the work.
essay is your own work. If you choose to present someone else's work as your own
(plagiarism), you risk detection and a "0" for the paper, the note cards, and the draft.