Preliminary Bibliography and Thesis Paper
This paper should contain two things: first, a preliminary bibliography on your subject and second, a preliminary statement of your thesis.
The preliminary bibliography should show that you have consulted the standard sources (library catalogue; Web of Science; etc.). It should contain at least twenty entries. You are not required to use these entries in your final paper; my purpose in requiring the bibliography is to ensure that you get started gathering the necessary material on your subject.
The preliminary thesis should be a 150-200 word description of the point or thesis of your paper. As with the bibliography, you are not bound to this description; my purpose in requiring it is simply to get you to start focusing your attention on your topic.
You can easily fake this assignment with about twenty minutes of work: go to the library web site, search for some randomly chosen problem, hastily copy twenty sources, and then write a b.s. essay on that term. You may well think, "I'll worry about this later; Chilton can't hold me to what I say here." However, you would be doing yourself a disservice by doing this, because the term paper is not something that can be done at the last minute. I will take off points both on this and on future assignments for the term paper if I believe that you have failed to take your subject seriously from the start.
The paper is due in class on Wednesday, March 24.
Follow this standard format. The quality of your writing should meet these writing standards.
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