Outline Senior Seminar Paper—3 parts
PART ONE: 2-3 pages
Description or statement of your research topic/ and a list of the main points you plan to cover (1 or more pages)
Explanation of the intersectional perspective using class reading(s)- specify readings, could begin with gender , but why not enough
What is intersectionality?
Why is it important?
How does it elaborate on social justice and the ways in which the groups you are looking at are denied privilege or given unearned privilege
How does your topic illustrate the intersectional perspective?
How does your research challenge views of more privileged groups? What is privilege? How does your research reveal oppression? Who do the different identities intersect?
What does your research contribute to our understanding of gender that a typical gender perspective misses?
.Why did you choose this topic? Does it relate to your life personally?
PART TWO: 10 pages
This is the main body of your research where you summarize, illustrate and document your main points.
I want you to find 5 main points— 5 mini sections of about 2 pages each. Or it can be 3 main points, 3 mini pages, as long as it ends up around 10 pages. Each section will state your main finding or discovery—and your supporting evidence— Supporting evidence for one of the 5 main points can be in the form of quotes from the literature, or data such as statistics you find, and or quotes from interviews that support your main point.
(you can put references in paranthesis, ie. if several writers are making the same point you can write in your paper:
(Krauss, 1993; Bullard, 2001; Marvin, 2002)
or if a quote for the page (Krauss, 1993: 1)
For example, I wrote an article about the ways in which race, class and gender intersect in women’s environmental protests. I found that African American, Native American, and white working class women had similar and different ways of describing their involvement in environmental protests.
HYPERLINK “http://home.earthlink.net/~smarwah/krauss.pdf” http://home.earthlink.net/~smarwah/krauss.pdf
The second half of my article included the following sections
1. Similarities: A Mother’s Movement
2. Differences: Three Sections- White Working Class Women, African American Women & Native Women
Note when you use a quote from a book or interview summarize the main point of the quote and explain why it offers supporting evidence for this theme.
PART THREE Conclusion 2-3 pages
Summarize your main conclusion and subpoints
What did you learn about your topic that was different and important that you didn’t know before you started this research project
What did you learn about the research process itself? How did your topic change as you did research, what did you learn in the process of doing research? For example, one student wrote a paper on Latina conceptions of beauty— she discovered that it was hard to talk about “Latina” as one group, since there were several conceptions of beauty.
How does your topic illustrate the intersectional perspective
Having done this research, why is the intersectional perspective important
How does your research contribute to understanding people’s lives
What is social policy and how does your research contribute to understanding social policy and social change around your topic?
What have you personally learned
