Context Research Presentations

Instructions: Your first step is to choose a topic. Take a look at the syllabus to review what we will be reading that week, and think about what research you can do to fill in gaps in your knowledge that you think others might also have also. Email your TA who will assist with choosing a topic in advance of your week. This is important because there will be multiple presentations each week and your TA will coordinate so that you’re not covering the same material as someone else.
Second, conduct your research. I recommend starting with Wikipedia even though it won’t be one of your three out-of-class sources. Why? Because it will help you understand the scope of what you’re looking at (which might lead you to narrow down your topic), you’ll learn the important terms that will guide your research, and you can make use of the article footnotes and suggested reading to get going. You’ll want to use the library website (library.osu.edu) to search for books or academic articles. I do not expect you to read whole books in preparation for this assignment, but your search might turn up articles or parts of books that can be useful. If the library website turns up either too little or way too much, try Google Scholar (scholar.google.com), which doesn’t tell you whether you have access to a source, but does have a much better search engine. Many of the topics we’ll be looking at are widely discussed but not necessarily always reliably discussed, so I recommend avoiding ordinary Google except as a jumping off point. Always verify your sources are reliable before including them in your presentation/blog post.
Third, skim or read the reading. Make a list of the things from your research that you think are most important for someone to know to understand the background of the reading.
Fourth, write up your research: a basic overview of the topic (1-2 paragraphs) and a more detailed explanation of whatever you think is most relevant as determined in step 3 (1-2 paragraphs). You do not need to write about how it’s relevant to the reading, but you might want to point out in closing what parts of the reading refer to it (for example, if you were writing about the Partition of India and Pakistan, when we read Jhumpa Lahiri’s short stories from Interpreter of Maladies, you would note that Partition is most relevant to the stories “A Real Durwan” and “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine”).
Your total post should be at least 300 words (3 paragraphs) and may be more, but please keep it under 400. In addition to that word count, you must include a bibliography of all sources in MLA format. See the Purdue OWL for information on creating an MLA bibliography (Links to an external site.). Any quotations in the body of your post must be indicated using quotation marks and should include an (author, page#) parenthetical citation.
Remember that this assignment is about giving your classmates’ some further background to help them understand the context of the reading for the week. Everything in your post should contribute to that goal.

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