WRITING NATURE:
DISCOURSES OF ECOLOGY
The research paper is the product of complex cycles of questioning, searching, learning, thinking, and writing. The research paper is more complex than most other academic writing you do not simply because it is longer but also because in it you must balance and interweave often complicated (sometimes even contradictory) material from many and various primary and secondary sources with your own observations, thoughts, and analysis.
Just as any decent written product represents an involved writing process, a good research paper will have behind it, in addition and often invisibly, a many-layered research process, which will include:
1) preliminary research representing initial investigation of your possible topic (and perhaps you will go through this more than once before you are sure you've found a topic you can develop and sharpen into a strong and focused thesis, that will support the amount and type of research you need to accumulate around it, and that you can throw yourself into with real enthusiasm);
2) accumulation of bibliographic material comprised of secondary and primary source possibilities, some of which, after wading or thinking through them, you will discard as useless or irrelevant;
3) close reading of abundant secondary material and, if you are conducting primary research in the form of surveys or interviews, for example, planning, coordinating, and executing these;
4) careful note-taking (or tape recording and transcribing);
5) detailed and formal outlining of your essay, showing how you plan to organize thoughts and integrate with them the outside material you want to use to support your statements, analyses, and arguments;
6) the original thinking necessary to make your secondary material work to support you rather than your slaving to rationalize its presence in your work;
7) and correct form in quoting, paraphrasing, and citing your sources in footnotes and bibliography.
To satisfy the research paper requirement in this course, you may write an academic research paper on any topic of interest to you, as long as it falls within the broad spectrum of our course theme.
Completed research papers should be around 12 pages (no fewer than 10 and no more than 15), not including footnotes or bibliography.
In this project, I want to encourage you to think beyond the usual seconday sources that most students involved early in their academic careers restrict themselves to in research. There are so many research possibilities, especially at an institution as resource-rich as Stanford. Consider consulting
€ Secondary sources in Green Library and the many specialized libraries on campus (for example, Lane Medical Library and the Law School Library or the Biology and Engineering Libraries, just to name a few). You'll be amazed at just how many libraries are included with the Stanford Library system.
€ Remember that Stanford's libraries, as phenomenal as they are, aren't the only game in town. In some cases, local city or county libraries might provide better sources, particularly related to community issues, than our campus libraries provide. (Here are links to the Palo Alto Public Library and the San Francisco Public Library.)
€ Consider undertaking archival research. The collections of the Hoover Institution Library and Archives, for example, provides an absolutely unique resource for students doing research in the area of war, revolution, and peace, including mass political movements of the 20th century; Special Collections in Green Library offer the same sort of opportunities, especially for those students who are researching aspects of life and history within the Stanford community. Or consider the possibility of doing archival research in the community -- for example, checking out documents and other resources that various environmental organization in the area have collected.
€ Primary sources in the form of interviews and/or surveys of your own design. Depending upon your topic and your objectives, you may want to interview an academic or research expert in the area of your topic; a community member whose expertise distinguishes him or her in other ways; or individuals who represent a typical range of experience or whose individual experience, thoughts, or attitudes you want to explore in depth. You may want to survey a range of individuals within specific communities within or outside the university in order to investigate attitudes and trends related to your topic.
€ Media (and multimedia) will provide variety in information and perspective. Beyond print on the page, consider doing research on the internet (but use your critical intelligence in selecting online sources. Investigate documentary films and radio productions related to your topic. Consider using visual images as a way of exploring, illustrating, and thinking about your topic.
There are two baseline requirements for kinds and use of sources in this research paper:
1) Plan on using a minimum of 12 sources in your final paper.
2) At least 1/3 of your sources should be other than printed secondary sources (books, magazine/journal articles, and online sources that you are citing for text alone, for example). In other words, at least 1/3 of your sources should include alternatives in the form of primary sources (interviews and/or surveys of your own design), archival sources, media sources (video or audio), and visual/representational sources (photographs, maps, charts, for example).
A WORD ON RESEARCH REPORTS AS OPPOSED TO THE DOCUMENTED ARGUMENTS/ANALYSES/INTERPRETATIONS
There tend to be two kinds of documented writing: research reports and documented arguments, analyses, or interpretations. The writer's job in writing a research report is to discover, relate, organize, and articulate the most essential primary and secondary source information on the subject and offer it to the reader without overt argument or judgment.
The documented argument, analysis, or interpretation, however, requires the writer, as a result of learning and thinking about the subject through the research process, to not simply coordinate the material, but to critically engage it. This kind of research is driven by the incessant question, Why? In a documented argument, analysis, or interpretation, the writer will demonstrate to the reader the analytic path s/he took and draw an active (whether it is definite or speculative) conclusion.
You may well be asked in some classes to produce a research report; however, in this class you are being asked to produce a documented argument, analysis, or interpretation. The idea is to critically engage what you discover through your investigation of your topic and draw an analytical conclusion.
Research paper topics are open within the broad social, political, historical, scientific, and literary themes of the course. In this course we are exploring and articulating ideas related to our species' relationship to the natural world, as well as to its own nature and the process of its evolution. Your topic should in some clear way relate but may fall within the full range of disciplines, including the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. I've had students who have written on excellent topics related to law, medicine, politics and international relations, sociology, urban planning, architecture, agriculture, economics, history, psychology, philosophy, literature, religion, anthropology, biology, astronomy, and, of course, ecology, conservation, and the environment.
It is crucial that your choice of topic arise out of your genuine interest. You should know enough about your topic to know that you want to know more ; you should know enough initially to know what questions to ask, questions that will motivate and guide your research.
Please note incremental due dates for work involved in the research paper, specifically for topic idea, draft of the research proposal, revised research proposal, working bibliography reflecting preliminary research, annotated bibliography, formal outline, draft, peer review, and revision: