Guide for writing papers for Rel 198
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I first look at the bibliography. The bibliography must be annotated.
That means that each entry should have a sentence or two describing the
content and the approach taken in the book, chapter, or article. At least
half of your sources should be from substantive print sources such as
scholarly journals. Every entry
should be as complete as possible. That is difficult with some web site
sources. I will use the URL you provide to check out the web sites. Examine
the site closely to find out who wrote the material. Do not just say there
is no author. If I find one through a little searching and you have not
cited this person by name, you lose a point.
News reports are not reliable. If you find articles
online from the NYTimes or Washington Post, or from Newsweek or Time,
remember that those articles are only summaries provided by amateurs.
Reporters are not expert in the many fields on which they report, so they
often get things wrong. Furthermore, they dumb down complex matters,
and they may exaggerate the aspects most likely to catch readers attention.
That is why you need substantive print sources like scholarly journals.
Indicate the author and chapter
you are citing when you use material from a book edited by someone else.
E.g., John Smith, ed., The Book of Knowledge (New York: Big Publisher,
1999), 12-20, is not enough, unless the page numbers refer to Smith’s own
intro or chapter. If 12-20 is actually Alice Jones, “Part of All Knowledge,”
then that is your actual reference. The whole reference should read:
Alice Jones, “Part of All Knowledge,” in John Smith, ed.,
The Book of
Knowledge (New York: Big Publisher, 1999), 12-20.
You are welcome to use either of the standard reference
formats. One is to use footnotes or endnotes, with little superscript
numbers guiding the reader to the full reference. The other is to put
information in parentheses. such as the name of the author, the date, and the page numbers
(Abernathy 2001: 16), letting the bibliography provide the fuller
information about who Abernathy is and what she published in 2001.
There are various ways of punctuating such parenthetical references; I do
not care how you do it as long as it makes a clear reference to an item in
the bibliography.
Most students remember to cite the name of the book or article or website.
The most important name, however, is the author. Some authors have
credibility; others do not. You will probably think you do not know which
authors are credible or not. True. But by attending to their names now, you
will slowly get familiar with many of them. Another aid concerning
credibility is to learn publishers. For many of them, their first job is to
publish things that people will buy, not to make sure that the book is
accurate or complete. If there is an audience for it, that is often enough.
Nonetheless, some publishers take pride in trying to get it right. This
includes especially university presses, starting with Oxford, Cambridge,
Chicago, Harvard, California, and other big names. A religious publisher is,
of course, going to favor texts that reflect the particular religious group
that publisher is in tune with. (Orbis is Catholic; Fortress/Augsberg is
Lutheran; Eerdmans is Calvinist, Baker Book House is Evangelical, as is
InterVarsity Press, etc.) The full reference, then, will identify the
author(s) or editor(s), the title of the work, the place where it is
published, the year of publication, and page numbers if relevant.
Every paragraph should identify the major source(s) for that paragraph, even
if that requires repetition. John Card claims that . . . Card further
argues . . . Card insists . . . . The true nature of the ghost dance, Card
claims , can be found in the evidence that . . . . Ann Johnson, however,
argues that . . . Johnson also reviews the relevant textual sources. . .
Card here claims, nonetheless, that . . . . This overdoes it a
bit. The rule is just to be clear to your reader what your source is
for each and every idea. It also helps you remember a very important
thing: a research paper does not report the truth; it reports
what someone claims is the truth, including what someone twenty years ago
believed to be the truth. If two or more of your sources disagree,
that is a bonus, not a problem. Report on the disagreement you come
across. That makes a good paper.
GENERAL STRUCTURE
– By the time you hand in your paper it should be in a form that would allow
me to easily outline it. The opening paragraph should provide guidance about
that outline (see the next section here). I strongly recommend using a clear
topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph. The other sentences in
that paragraph should provide the specifics which explain, illustrate, and
support the topic sentence.
– By the time you have finished the first draft of your paper, you should be
able to type out each topic sentence one after the other so that they in
fact provide the full outline of the paper. You will probably also want to
subdivide the paper into major sections, each with its own sequence of topic
sentences. You can then look at the sequence of parts and topic sentences
and see clearly whether there is an orderly outline that will make sense of
things to your readers.
AUDIENCE
Plan to write your paper to be read by an intelligent and informed high
school senior, who is not familiar with the topic of your paper. Write a
paper that you could have enjoyed reading and learning from in high school.
OPENING PARAGRAPH
Your intro should not waste words on how things are “in today’s world”
[please do not ever use that phrase], or generalities about life. If it were
a literature course or a journalism course I would encourage you to begin
with some vignette or concrete image to grab the reader’s attention and give
rise to a little emotional identification with the topic. You can still do
this, but I will grade on substantive content, not on good journalistic
techniques, praiseworthy though they may be. Identify your topic and your
sub-topics, so I know how the paper is structured. Here is an example of an
opening paragraph which a) defines the topic, b) defines the precise focus
of this paper, and c) alerts the reader to look for three major parts.
Apocalypticism is belief in a catastrophic end of the
world as we know it. Apocalyptic thought has flourished for centuries
and has taken various forms. One is the Christian expectation, even a
hope, that God will soon bring about a cataclysmic destruction of the
world and then usher in the messianic age of peace and happiness under
the rule of Christ. This paper will describe three aspects of this
Christian version: its biblical foundations, some historical instances
of intense apocalyptic anticipation, and some significant current
predictions of an imminent end of the world.
STRUCTURING A PARAGRAPH
To repeat: most paragraphs should have a clear topic sentence at the
beginning. The rest of the sentences in that paragraph should provide the
specifics that explain, illustrate, and support the claims made in the topic
sentence. For example:
The ghost dance of the North American plains natives
in the 19th century is often called a kind of apocalypticism. As Denise
and John Carmody tell it (1993: 60-81), around 1870 a Paiute shaman
named Wovoka spread a belief that if they engaged in a ritual dance for
five days, calling upon the spirits of their ancestors, the ancestors
would drive the white men away and give the plains back to the Native
Americans. By 1890 this belief had spread widely, including to various
Sioux tribes. Many Sioux believed that if they wore “ghost shirts,”
tunics worn during the dancing ritual, that the bullets of the white
men’s army could not hurt them. This encouraged them to rebel against
the U.S. Army, in the hope of precipitating the final battle, between
good and evil, after which the ancestors would eliminate white people in
the West. Unfortunately, say the Carmodys, that rebellion led to the massacre at Wounded
Knee in South Dakota, where hundred of Sioux were killed. The ghost
shirts provided no protection. The ghost dances continued for many years
among various tribal groups, however; evidence perhaps that apocalyptic
hopes do not die easily.
RULES ON USING QUOTATIONS AND MAKING REFERENCES
– First of all, it is not at all necessary to have a quotation in order to
provide a reference to the source from which you got ideas or information.
Your high school teachers may have wanted you to use a certain number of
quotations so that you could practice writing footnotes or endnotes or using
other forms of reference. But a good paper could have twenty footnotes or
other references without having a single quotation.
– Quotations can be useful, but only to illustrate or support that which
you have already made fully clear in your own words. Never make the
quotation do your work of explaining something. Let me repeat: you
have to explain clearly in your own words every single quotation you use.
– References do two things. First, they acknowledge where you are getting
your information. Unless you are an expert on the topic you are writing on,
you must rely on some authoritative sources. A reference acknowledges your
sources, giving them due credit. Second, references allow the reader to
estimate the validity of the claims made by your source and presented in
your paper. If the publisher is a vanity press, that suggests that the
author could not get approval from a scholarly publisher . If the author is
associated with a group with a clear bias, that helps the reader be
appropriately cautious.
Do not use sources that provide you only with generalities. Most web sites
do this. Consider this brief fictitious paragraph, for example:
“In the 1980s, German neo-Nazis sponsored many acts of
violence, putting pressure on the German government to suppress this
movement. But the neo-Nazis also evoked positive support from many who
did not like foreigners, and who perhaps blamed unemployment on
foreigners.”
A web site might include nothing but such generalities.
You need to be able to provide details. You might end up being able to say,
for example, that
In 1982 there were 48 attacks on synagogues by
neo-Nazi groups, in Essen, Frankfurt, and Berlin. Many foreigners,
especially immigrant Turks, were assaulted by neo-Nazi groups, or their
willing allies, various skinhead groups. In Berlin three Turks were
killed and 28 wounded in July, 1983 alone. So the government knew it had
to respond strongly.
You are probably not going to get this level of detail
without finding lengthy articles or even books on the topic. And to be sure you find useful
material,
you need to consult the Roesch library resources early and find out if you
have to order some books from OhioLink. You will want to explore some
databases. On the Roesch library site, click on the Database link in the
upper left. This will bring you to lists of databases. Google
Scholar is listed as a database and can provide you with many sources on
many specific topics. On religion the ATLA Religion Database is a good
place to start.
This is probably different from your approach to writing a research paper in
high school. Many of you were able to do the research for a paper over the
weekend. If you do that for this course you will probably earn a “C.”
Do not be tendentious. If you want to make a case for a
certain viewpoint, fine, but make it clear to the reader that you are doing
that. And to do a good job of making a case for a viewpoint, you need to
bring up each of the possible arguments against your position and give
adequate evidence and argument that your position is nonetheless the more
reasonable one to take. Alternately, you could write an expository paper,
giving the pros and cons on a given issue without taking sides.
