In the same way recording an original song or producing an original movie requires knowing what other artists have already done, doing original research requires understanding how your field has already approached your broad topic (see Capstone-Guide-Sp2018 for what we mean by “original” research).

In this assignment, you will investigate and write about what questions others have already asked within your broad topic—and the answers they found. For this assignment you will need to identify and describe five questions (and their answers) that have already been asked about your broad topic.

STEP 1: Where to find discussion of questions in a field

When reading a scholarly article, you will usually find a literature review after the introduction (sometimes this literature review will be explicitly labeled and sometimes not). Such literature reviews can be extremely helpful in figuring out both what questions have already been asked as well as what new questions the author plans to answer. Reading a single article carefully, accordingly, can get you two questions!

Let’s look at an example. In this excerpt from Dalton Conley’s Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America (University of California, 2009), Conley both discusses what questions scholars have previously asked about the wealth disparity by race in America and the NEW questions he is asking and why those new questions matter.

So, look for discussion of MAJOR QUESTIONS ASKED in the field from the lit review section.

STEP 2: Your Five Questions

Briefly describe each of the questions you identified and the answer specialists in the topic have settled on. Doing so should take about a paragraph for each question (so, five paragraphs total).

The more specific you can be in your paragraph, the better.

Be sure to identify the source you drew upon for your discussion of each question with a brief bibliography.   So, if—for example—you learned of Massey and Denton’s analysis of segregation from Conley’s Being Black, Living in the Red (see the example above; Conley quotes Massey and Denton at length in a block quotation), you would want to cite both Conley as well as Massey and Denton.

BE SURE YOUR QUESTIONS EMERGE FROM THE SPECIALISTS’ DISCUSSION OF EXISTING LITERATURE.

STEP 3: Documenting Your Sources

Wherever it is in your source that you learn of the question and its answer, take a screen shot (or photo) of the relevant passage (just as there are screenshots from Being Black, Living in the Red­—you don’t need, obviously, to annotate the screenshot).  (how to take a screenshot: pc ; mac)

Put each of your screenshots in the document you submit. Be sure to put the screenshots in the order that you present the evidence in Step 2 above.

DO NOT SUBMIT MORE THAN ONE DOCUMENT TO BLACKBOARD.