The last paper is a short research paper. The length is a minimum of eight pages

The last paper is a short research paper. The length is a minimum of eight pages.
You have two choices for the topic for this final paper – take one of your short, three-page papers and expand it (add five pages and restructure the original paper) or pick one of the themes from the course (each week counts as a theme), and then write an entirely new paper. 
Option 1:
This DOES NOT mean just write five new pages.  By adding on, you can take the original three pages, but will have to reorganize that paper. 
By reorganizing, this means you can keep the intro paragraph – with the thesis – but then add and/or change the following paragraphs. 
In those changes, you will need to add/incorporate new EXTERNAL sources.  In total, you need eight sources – two can be from class.  The other six need to be from non-class sources. 
These sources should be from PEER-REVIEWED.  This means academic journals and/or books.  If you are really unsure about if a source is peer-reviewed or not, then search on the SF State library website, and you will see in your search the term ‘peer-review’ appear.
(I search the topic ‘globalization’ in the university library website.  See how it says ‘PEER REVIEWED’ with the little pic?)
This paper also needs to include a literature review section (one to two pages) and then a section with your argument. 
A literature review is where you present what others have written on your subject.  That section also should contain a critical summary of those sources that set up your argument.  After that section of the paper, then you present your argument. 
The argument section of the paper is longest part.  You can use original materials (things like newspapers) or other things, like articles or books. The point is to present your point, your argument there. 
Option 2:
Write a paper with a new idea – not using one of your three three-page papers.
For this option, you need to pick one of the themes from the course (something from history, finance, trade, development).
Then, you need to create a new thesis.  Just like for the short papers.
Then, you write a literature review and present your argument, with evidence (this is the same as discussed in option 1, see the section on PEER-REVIEW and what follows).
I recommend that if you are lost, you don’t know which option to focus on for the final paper, that you do option 1.  Option 2 is for people who really have an idea that they want to write about, and couldn’t write about that in one of the short papers.