General Project Description
A paper prospectus is a detailed outline of your research project. It should contain a working title for your project, a research question, and provide a thorough description of your intended argument. The goal of a prospectus is to give the reader a solid sense of your ideas and analysis of the text without writing a formal research paper. Your prospectus should be accompanied by a detailed annotated bibliography summarizing three sources you intend to use in your paper.
Prospectus Guidelines
In this project, you will be tasked with creating a research argument about migration and British colonialism in Bapsi Sidhwas Cracking India. As part of your argument, you must incorporate at least one piece of theory that we read together this semester (Butlers Violence, Mourning and Politics; Saids Reflections on Exile; Ngugu wa Thiongos Decolonising the Mind Anzaldas Borderlands). You must write a detailed 500-word prospectus that thoroughly outlines your research question and proposed argument and explains how you intend to use your research to analyze specific aspects of Sidhwas novel.
Annotated Bibliography
Produce an annotated bibliography with at least three relevant and credible sources for your final paper. Your Annotated Bibliography should contain 1 piece of theory that we read together in class and 2 scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles. For each of the sources, you will create an MLA bibliographic citation and write a paragraph of at least 200 words that both summarizes the source and comments on its potential usefulness for your research paper.
Elements of an Annotated Bibliography
Like a Work Cited page, an annotated bibliography is a list of citations for books, articles, and documents; however, it also provides a brief analytical summary of a source and information on how it will be useful to you in your research. Each entry in your annotated bibliography will include the following elements:
A complete and correct MLA citation for each source. Visit Purdue OWL for examples.
An analytical summary of the texts content that will include
o The purpose or main argument of the text.
o How you will use the source, including its relevance and usefulness to your research topic
o Connections to related sources in your bibliography that allow you to compare sources or establish connections and conversations between them, such as similar or opposing views.
Sample Annotated Bibliography for a Researched Source
Nisetich, Rebecca. Reading Race in Nella Larsens Passing and the Rhinelander Case African American Review, vol. 46, no. 2/3, Summer/Fall 2013, pp. 345-361.
Rebecca Nisetichs literary criticism article Reading Race in Nella Larsens Passing and the Rhinelander Case discusses Nella Larsens 1929 novel Passing in conversation with the Rhinelander Case, which was briefly referenced in the novel, to explore the complex ways in which race was defined in the United States in the 1920s, when the pure whites were anxious about the weakening boundaries around race and class. She argues that although the Rhinelander case drew hard lines between the definitions of black and white, Alice Jones [Rhinelander], challenged the concept of race as a visible identifier. Nisetich correlates her with the Passing character Clare Kendry Bellew, who also did not comply with the racial conventions of the United States that defined race based on the one drop rule. The author further contrasts Clare with the Passing character Irene, who identifies as Black according to racial lines drawn by Plessy v. Ferguson. Using the 1924 Rhinelander Case in conversation with Clares character, Nisetich discusses the binary notions of race. She argues that passing is an inaccurate description of Alice Jones or Clare if they personally identified themselves as white, thereby contrasting how society defines the women with how they identify themselves, thereby challenging the binary racial construct. Nisetichs article provides a lens through which to juxtapose Irene and societys racial identifiers with the personal identifiers employed by Clare in the novel Passing. This source will be utilized in conversation with the one drop rule discussed in Plessy v. Ferguson: Who Was Plessy? by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
