Research Portfolio

Your major assignment for this class, as you already know, is a research essay. We will be spending the last few weeks of this class working solely on this essay. Your topic can be anything at all that is related to AIDS. I expect these essays to be focused and in depth, and you are to use your research to prove a point (your thesis). This is not a paper where you are supposed to simply express information, though I do expect you to address the larger context of the issue you are discussing (something I will clarify in class). I expect you to use your research skills to prove a point. You can use a personal tone ("I" voice) if it fits the style of your essay, or it can be formal. You may also want to write your essay in sections. We'll discuss all of these options at some point in class. In many ways, the style and tone of the essay is up to you. Think about what works best for your particular topic. You may want to write an essay that fits the disciplinary genres of your major. Or you may want to do something completely different. No matter what topic or style you choose, you will each need to utilize skills of summary, synthesis, and analysis as you prove your argument.

The final draft should be eight (8) to ten (10) pages. As always, the audience for this essay would be your peers in other English 161 sections. In this essay, you should use at least eight (8) sources. These can be primary (interviews, surveys, personal observations) or secondary (library books, journal articles, websites); you should utilize a variety of sources nonetheless. Use MLA style in your citations and the completion of a Works Cited page. The Works Cited page does not count towards the page requirements of the essay.

Dates to Remember (in addition to those of the Midterm Portfolio)

Tuesday, March 9: One-Page Research Proposal [A description of your topic, why you have chosen it, what sources you expect to use, how you plan to conduct your research, and questions you hope to address] Due (2 copies)/Prompt for Annotated Bibliography Given
Tuesday, March 23 and Thursday, March 25: No Class; Time for Library Work/Research
Tuesday, March 30: Draft of Annotated Bibliography Due
Thursday, April 1: Annotated Bibliography Due (Missing This Means a Lowered Grade on Your Portfolio)
Tuesday, April 6: Draft of Research Essay Due for Peer Review (At least four pages; bring copies for Research Group) (Missing This Means a Lowered Grade on Your Portfolio)
Tuesday, April 13: Complete Draft of Research Essay Due
Thursday, April 15 and Tuesday, April 20: No Class; Time for Required Individual Conferences in My Office (Missing This Means a Lowered Grade on Your Portfolio)
Thursday, April 22, Tuesday, April 27, and Thursday, April 29: Individual Five-Minute Class Presentations (Missing This Means a Lowered Grade on Your Portfolio)
Thursday, April 29: Final Research Portfolio Due

In your Research Portfolio, you need to include a final, clean copy of your research essay along with the following: your one-page research proposal, your annotated bibliography, drafts of the essay (including the ones with my comments), a process log/journal (a list that states what you did when). You may also wish to include more notes or journal entries, copies of the articles that you use in your research and/or a process letter.

For a step-by-step guide to writing research papers, check the APlus Research & Writing for High School and College Students Home Page.

Annotated Bibliography Prompt

An annotated bibliography lists sources that discuss a specific issue and includes both the citation and the annotation. You will complete one that lists five (5) sources. First, you should write about 1/2 page (single-spaced) that describes your overall topic or research question. It should state your hypothesis and plans for your final essay. Then, list the sources and annotations in alphabetical order. The citation should be in MLA Documentation Style. The annotation should both summarize the source briefly and evaluate it, stating how and why it is or is not effective. What does the author do well? What is the piece lacking? How can you use it in your paper? You should use a variety of sources, meaning that they cannot all be magazine articles, newspaper stories, or sites off the internet. You can only use two (2) sources from any particular genre. In other words, you could only use two websites, magazine articles, journal articles, books, or whatever. Look at different sources to get a multitude of perspectives on the issue you want to discuss.

This should be single-spaced and about three pages long. Bring a draft to class on Tuesday, March 30 (the same day that the revision of your summary/analysis essay is due). A copy that I will grade is due on Thursday, April 1 (note change from date on syllabus and research prompt). I will grade this; you do not have a chance to revise it. It will make up 15% of the grade on your final research portfolio.

Sample Annotations

Lewis-Thornton, Rae. "Facing AIDS." Essence December 1994: 62+. This personal narrative stands outbecause of the fact that it tells one person's story in a magazine aimed primarily at African-American women. Lewis-Thornton begins her story with the day she discovered she was HIV-positive and moves to a description of her life before this moment. she describes getting kicked out of her mother's house when she was seventeen and how she kept working until graduated magna cum laude from college. She describes how her boyfriend at the time of her diagnosis left her the night she opened up to him. then she moves to a description of her new boyfriend and his support for her. the final section of the article portrays the physical impact of AIDS on her life such as the number of pills she takes each day, their effects on her body and the amount of weight she has lost because of her sickness. the photographs on the cover and accompanying the article are also designed to connect the viewer to Lewis-Thornton. She wears a long black dress and looks up at the camera with a face made up with lipstick, eye shadow, and mascara and straightened, stylized hair on the cover and a long, white dress with similar makeup and hair inside the magazine. By looking beautiful in the traditional sense, the images do confront the myth that you can look at someone and see that they have AIDS. This essay does not move beyond Lewis-Thornton's personal experiences but it does effectively show the voice of one woman dealing with this disease today.

Woods, Gregory. "AIDS to Remembrance: The Uses of the Elegy." AIDS: The Literary Response. Ed. Emmanuel S. Nelson. New York: Twayne, 1992. 155-66. The start of this essay gives an excellent overview of the elegy's traditions by drawing upon short examples from Theocritus, Gray, Milton, Tennyson, and Whitman. As Woods puts it, "elegy is required to perform a change of mood, from grief, through fond remembrance, to hope" (160). This sense of hope arises from the poet's realization that her or his (usually "his" in poetic history) subject will live again in the "hereafter." Woods points out that in these traditional elegies, the poet is separated from the subject because he or she is often not at the same risk of death at the person who died. In poetry about AIDS, the poet often fears for his or her own death of the death of others beyond the single person in the poem. Looking specifically at poems by Roy Gonsalves, Thom Gunn, Paul Monette, Honor Moore, and others Woods shows how this fear of continuing death grounds this poetry in the realities of today and rarely arrives at the resolved sense of hope in traditional elegies. Woods does a good job of showing how poetry about AIDS connects to a historical tradition while also revising that tradition.

Research Log

On the prompt for your research essay, I told you to maintain a research log that your will turn in with your research portfolio. This will comprise 10% of your research portfolio grade. Keep track of everything that you are doing that relates to your completing your research essay. It can be handwritten or typed, but it should be readable. The more you write down and more details you provide, the better your grade will be. As examples,

Tuesday, March 9, 1999: I went to the library on campus today and tried to find what I could about my topic, how television shows represent AIDS. I got on one of the computers and did a search with the keywords "television and AIDS" on several databases: Humanities Abstracts, Art Abstracts, General Readers Guide. I also looked at the MLA Bibliography Database. I got a list of about twelve articles, but our library only has four of them. I photocopied those and found the forms to get the others through Interlibrary Loan. I'll fill those out tomorrow.

Monday, March 15, 1999: I found a few articles on ER so I might focus on that for my essay, maybe. I went to the Columbia College Library in downtown Chicago because they have some of the journals I need. I found three more articles. I also checked out some general books on television that I might be able to use for background information.

Tuesday, March 16, 1999: I read three of my articles today. This one by a guy named Johnson was really bad so I don't think I'll use it. But this one by Highberg was really good. He talked about Designing Women and how they had this guy with AIDS on the show. I think I might compare AIDS on comedies and dramas. Now I need to find a way to watch actual episodes and go back to the library and do a search on these specific television shows.

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Created by Nels P. Highberg (nhighb1@uic.edu)