Writing a Prospectus – Proposing a Thesis, A Paper, Your Research January 12, 2017

Intoductions Director of the Writing Center What is your previous experience with research? Resource: Lucretia Yaghjian, Writing Theology Well

At the end of today, you will be able to: What are we doing here? At the end of today, you will be able to: Develop a strategy for completing your prospectus Identify chief characteristics of a research plan Do the preliminary work for a research proposal

Where are you on this project?

Where we are going The MTS Template for a Prospectus The prospectus must consist of no more than 15 pages and include the following information: (1) A clear statement of the thesis of the proposed project, showing how it is anchored in the conceptual shifts that are characteristic of "modern religious thought and interpretation." (2) A bibliographical essay that puts the thesis in context, both (i) by discussing the state of the question in current scholarship and (ii) by analyzing the types of sources to be used in the project. (3) An outline that lists the proposed chapters and shows how their arrangement and the content of each chapter support and advance the thesis. 4) A cumulative bibliography at the end of the prospectus that lists only the works cited in the prospectus.

Moving from paper to project If you are thinking about writing a master’s thesis, you can probably come up with an argument about whatever I ask. However, writing a thesis requires becoming project-drive, not paper driven. Moving to inquiry driven research Refining ideas, not ‘in and done’ Question-based, not grade-based

Research What is research? What makes research theological? Literally, searching again; re-searching Gathering information to help solve a problem or answer a question Refining a question What makes research theological?

What role does a Prospectus have? A prospectus is not a contract A prospectus is an intriguing, focused, researched overview of your idea about what your research will show

A process for doing theological research From Yaghjian 86-87 Proceeds by hypothesis, assertion, and argument Begins with inquiry Requires reading and reviewing the literature Presupposes a methodology Engenders a search for sources Involves writing, rewriting, and revision Builds on an ongoing scholarly conversation Demands documentation Presumes some form of publication Creates and claims a research space

Begins with inquiry Generating a research question Start with what you already know. Don’t (typically) start in the library (you’ll spend a lot of time there later). Starting with a puzzle What are your questions? Name 3 possible topics

Methodology Method vs Methodology What methodology will you choose for your research topics? Why?

Sources Finding friends What sources are relevant for your question? Refining via sources—what can you realistically get?

Engaging conversation Narrowing your topic Narrowing in conversation

Creating a research space Place your voice in the conversation

Constructing an argument Hypothesis—put it all together Because of DATA POINTS X, Y, and Z, we can see that A, B, and C are true. Test Did I consider all the relevant data? Are A, B, and C really and always true? Evaluation—am I right?

Exercises I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakey's Version Of "Three Blind Mice" - Poem by Billy Collins (activity from Yaghjian) And I start wondering how they came to be blind. If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister, and I think of the poor mother brooding over her sightless young triplets. Or was it a common accident, all three caught in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps? If not, if each came to his or her blindness separately, how did they ever manage to find one another? Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse to locate even one fellow mouse with vision let alone two other blind ones? And how, in their tiny darkness, could they possibly have run after a farmer's wife or anyone else's wife for that matter? Not to mention why. Just so she could cut off their tails with a carving knife, is the cynic's answer, but the thought of them without eyes and now without tails to trail through the moist grass or slip around the corner of a baseboard has the cynic who always lounges within me up off his couch and at the window trying to hide the rising softness that he feels. By now I am on to dicing an onion which might account for the wet stinging in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard's mournful trumpet on "Blue Moon," which happens to be the next cut, cannot be said to be making matters any better.

Exercises Sing a song of sixpence, A pocket full of rye. Four and twenty blackbirds, The maid was in the garden, Baked in a pie. Hanging out the clothes, When down came a blackbird When the pie was opened, And pecked off her nose. The birds began to sing; Wasn't that a dainty dish, Prompt: For a church history course, you are writing a research paper on the ecclesiology of “Mother Goose,” a collection of English nursery rhymes that appeared around the time of the English Reformation. Using Billy Collins’s questions about “Three Blind Mice” as a springboard, (1) compose your own questions about this nursery rhyme; (2) choose three questions that are fundamental to your inquiry, and explain why each is important; (3) select one question of these three that you would use to launch your own ‘ecclesiological’ investigation, and explain why you chose it. (Yaghjian 89) To set before the king? The king was in his counting house, Counting out his money; The queen was in the parlour, Eating bread and honey.