Humanities Homework Help

PAPER GUIDELINES

Each student will submit a final paper on their presentation topic. Papers must be at least five pages, including four pages of content and one page for references. Please do not include a cover sheet.

The content of the paper should consist mainly in a literature review summarizing and synthesizing the previous sociological work on your chosen topic. Papers must cite at least three references, which must come from a peer reviewed journal article. Additional sources over the required three may come from other journals or non-academic books; however, the bulk of the paper should focus on the sociological literature.

A good literature review has two goals:

1. To identify and summarize the key sociological works on a given topic, highlighting the most influential contributions—those that define the field, are cited by other authors, and provide key theories on the topic.

2. To synthesize these major works into some type of coherent framework. This could mean putting works in historical order and explaining how the field has evolved over time, or exploring the similarities and differences between current viewpoints on a topic, or both.

Your papers are NOT to include original research. You do not need to analyze any data, collect any surveys, or perform field work. Your intellectual contribution will be providing organization and clarity to your summaries.

Papers will be graded for content as well as grammar, style, and organization.

Introduction: what background do we need to know about the topic? Where, when, who, etc. Is there any history we should understand? And why should we care about this topic—interesting in itself, relevant to sociological theory, relevant to laws, policy, society?

• Attention-getter; Set the scene
• Central Idea; Introduce your topic and its application of sociological theory
• Briefly establish credibility and relate topic to audience
• Preview the main points

Literature Review: what are the major works and/or major theories in this area? Summarize and synthesize your articles. How are they relevant? How do they explain/support your topic? Relate your evidence back to your main point.

Conclusion: here the author will generally try to make clear their contribution to the field by discussing any potential uses for the new knowledge they’ve shared. They might fit their findings back into the literature, suggest future research of some sort, and maybe even offer some real-world advice their research suggests.

• Summary of main points
• Restatement of the central idea
• Challenges/limitations
• Next steps?

NOTE: Define any key terms that may not be common. Utilize the textbook as a source. Make sure your provide proper citations!