For your final assignment, you will apply your sociological imagination to write a paper on some specific problem or question within the broad topic area on which you chose to focus. In this paper, you should analyze some important issues or controversies of your own interest. As described in the syllabus, this paper should be based on the assigned readings, outside sources, class discussion, and anything else you uncovered in your own work preparing the theory outlines and group final project.
Although these papers should address the same topic area as your group projects, they should NOT be merely a summary of the texts (or a re-summary of the group paper). Rather, focus on some particular point that especially interests you. You can begin by thinking about the topic itself: What stood out to you from the assigned texts? What did (or didn’t) you understand about the methods or theories? What else did you learn from supplementary reading? What additional information or context is provided by comparing and contrasting multiple sources? What further controversies, issues, or lacunae did your fellow students’ comments push you to consider? What made you choose this topic in the first place, and how has your curiosity been addressed?
Alternately, you may wish to interrogate some particular empirical or theoretical claim made in something you read – again, selected on the basis of your own interest. What point is the author trying to prove? What evidence is provided to ground that point? How strong is the warrant linking the claim to its evidentiary grounds? What additional light is shed on this claim by considering the evidence or argument presented in supplementary readings, and what can we learn by comparing the different sources?
Most academic writing features a “literature review” section which tells the audience what is already known about a topic, then a main section which proceeds to make an original argument that contributes something new to that body of knowledge. Think of your group projects as the “review,” and this paper as only the second half: the real argument or contribution.
