For example, if your specific topic is something purely descriptive, such as “What are tax havens?”, or something obvious or overly simplistic, such as “Is climate change bad?”, or “Is inequality a problem?”, it is highly unlikely that you will get a good grade. Choosing your own topic also does not mean that you can just take an old essay you wrote on something similar for another course, and submit it here as original work. It will get flagged by Turnitin as plagiarism (even though you would just be “plagiarising” yourself), and there is zero tolerance for that (it not only means 0 on the assignment, but also failing the course, and could potentially lead to an expulsion from the university as such).
That said, you can draw on your own academic interests, or on your knowledge from other courses, as long as these are relevant to one of the three themes, and as long as they can be said to be from within international studies. For example, you could analyze the class, racial, or gender impacts of climate change (either in general or perhaps in a specific region or country).
Or you could consider whether in tackling CO2 emissions, it is fair to be taking into account the historical CO2 emissions of countries (including even before the 1970s or so, in the decades during which humans genuinely did not know climate change was happening), or only contemporary emissions. Or, if you are familiar with theories of international relations, you could compare how different schools of thought approach one of these themes or certain topics closely related to them.
These are just some very basic examples. The themes are quite broad, and I am quite flexible. There are hundreds of other really interesting topics or angles to engage with from within these themes, but also many weak ones, keep in mind that this is a university course, and you are training to become independent researchers/experts, so I am expecting a certain level of quality. If you are unsure, do a bit of reading, take the time to think about it, and if you’d like, you can send me the topic and the research question you are thinking about pursuing, and I’ll let you know whether it’s worthwhile or not.
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General Tips (applicable regardless of whether you choose to do a critical film review or a research paper):
1. You should do an extensive literature search, in addition to using the compulsory readings and lecture materials. Your own research and your own views are welcome and encouraged, as long as they are backed up by evidence from reputable sources.
2. It is fine to make a series of observations but do your best to organize these to support an overall argument. Strong essays (whether they are critical film reviews or research papers) have a research question and a core argument. Weak essays do not. The essays have to be ARGUMENTATIVE, they CANNOT be mere summaries of the movies or some readings, I need to see arguments, I need to see your brains working as I am reading your essays.
3. Make sure that you set out the essay in a logical way and try not to jump about from point to point or between arguments. The contents of the essays matter the most, but the form and presentation are also very important, do not underestimate this “technical” side of writing.
4. Preparing an outline in advance is one of the surest ways to avoid disaster on essays.
5. Strive to make your point of view clear and rigorous.
6. Paragraphs should deal with one major idea. They should be more than one sentence long. If your paragraphs are short, it probably means that you are not developing the thought in the paragraph sufficiently.
7. Think of a title that is catchy and informative of your argument, and always leave the reader with a strong introduction and conclusion.
8. The quality of English will influence your final grade. I am not expecting perfect English, but at the very least avoid spelling mistakes (use a spell checker), and other inconsistencies that make the text look sloppy. Write in short sentences. Make sure it is clear what you are trying to say. Proof read your work several times to check for spelling and grammatical mistakes. Do not use informal, colloquial English that would be appropriate for speaking (or texting!). You are writing, not speaking here.
9. Use section headings to differentiate parts of your essay.
10. Use references to published sources to support your claims. Two references for a whole essay would be insufficient. Two or three references per page would be a more reasonable minimum. Relevant newspaper sources, or data from the IMF, the World Bank, the OECD, etc. are perfectly fine, but you must reference at least five academic sources in your essay (in the syllabus it says eight, but I lowered it). Note that many readings in this syllabus, such as newspaper articles, are reputable sources, but they are NOT academic sources – see the last two pages of the syllabus for examples of academic sources and other useful resources. Websites can provide us with the latest information on particular issues. Like any other medium, the quality of websites varies – some are excellent in providing information and analysis, while others are poor. You need to make a judgment call about what you should use for your work. Wikipedia is not an acceptable reference. Be careful to remember that most websites have their own particular agenda or viewpoints and you need to bear this in mind when using information from the internet.
11. As for the referencing style, you can use any of the major ones (APA, ASA, Harvard, Chicago, etc.), BUT make sure to consistently stick to the one you chose, do not mix them.
12. Make sure to number the pages of your essay, and also provide the word count of the essay (not counting the references).
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