. Discussion 4- you are going to use this space to discuss your upcoming Researc

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Discussion 4-
you are going to use this space to discuss your upcoming Research Paper with me.
Yes, that means this week, you need to post your Proposal for approval.
I attached a Student Sample. There are very specific requirements about acceptable topics, what the thesis must include, and so on. For example, if you try to write about anything that does not cover one of the following three topics, it will not be accepted:
Research an unsolved mystery (it need not be a murder, but it is much easier if it is); based on the evidence, write up a reasonable argument for what actually happened. For example, who is a reasonable murderer in the Jack the Ripper or the Black Dahlia murders?
briefly write some background introducing your topic
craft a thesis statement that must follow a prescribed format (see below)
produce a tentative Works Cited page (more on that below as well)
Is there a particular format that you need to follow?
The short answer is, “sort of.”
You will have a brief (about a paragraph) opening that introduces the topic. It will essentially give some highlights about the case or conspiracy and explain that it’s never been satisfactorily solved.
NOTE HOW BOTH BEGIN WITH THE WORD ALTHOUGH; there are certainly other ways to frame an argument thesis, but I actually explained in a lecture why I want everyone to begin with “Although…”.
If you select the unsolved murder/crime topic, follow this template:
Although police have never found the killer of _______________________, the murder was actually committed by _______________________ .
EXAMPLE: Although Jonbenet Ramsey’s killer was never located, she was actually murdereed by her brother Burke which was then covered up by Jonbenet’s mother.
A Works Cited page with at least three sources at this point. At least one of those sources must be a book source. Even though I do no expect you to have double spacing and hanging indents, be sure your list has all of the information required for MLA-8 format entries; make sure the order of information, and the punctuation (periods, quotation marks, italics, etc.) are done correctly. At least 500 words
Discussion 5
“Trying to Find Chinatown”
What, really, is identity? When people ask me, “What are you?” (I do get asked that more than you might imagine), my quick answer is, “I’m Irish,” but am I? I have never been to Ireland, do not speak the language, rarely eat the food (though I do love potatoes; is that a stereotype?), and so on. To be fair, I am (like many in the U.S.) more of a mutt with some smatterings of Scottish and English as well, but Corbally is an Irish name still known in County Limerick.
Discuss the following:
Which of the two characters, Ronnie or Benjamin, has the better claim for being Chinese (or, if you prefer, Chinese-American)and why? Don’t rush here; this one-act play is a lot more complex than it might seem (and so is the question about what makes up identity).
Also, be sure to support your position with details from the play (I certainly would not overlook the long monologue where Ronnie names a whole lot of people (you will want to look them up) or the fact that the stage directions mention he is playing his violin like Hendrix.
Some tips and added thoughts:
This particular discussion begs for a little bit of research on ethnicity/race/identity (what do sociologists think about this?). If you do include researched material, please include the Works Cited entry and/or links to other sites.
Also consider such recent events as the Rachel Dolezal controversy.
You might even want to look up and refer to Nell Bernstein’s article “Goin’ Gangsta, Choosin’ Cholita” (which is available on the internet as I type this).
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Discussion 6
This week you looked at sound and form–two important elements to consider in many (not all) poems. Even so-called “free” poetry, such as e e cummings’s “l(a”, often has intentional form. But we are going to work with a more-traditional, closed form, the haiku. The rules for haiku were in this week’s lecture, and you looked at examples.
Here is your task:
Choose either one of the following two topics
Write a suite of haiku. 14+ for 20 points. They should all be somehow related (six sports haiku, twelve haiku on family, fifteen haiku relating to a backpacking trip to Yosemite, etc.). Just follow the syllable rules in this week’s lecture. To make them easier to read, I recommend putting some extra spacing between each haiku.
If you would like to tell a story, then you can mix genres and can re-tell any of the short stories or plays (not poems) on our reading list in a handful of haiku in half a dozen haiku (For 14+ haiku, trying for 20 points). Reducing a longer work to so few lines should be quite a fun challenge.