The FYS criteria call for us to learn about the research process, and we'll do this in several ways during the semester.
In Paper One you're asked to select one of the topics for your short report from the list I've given you, many of which are accompanied by a preliminary reading that I have selected for you and linked on the website. But on the assignment itself, you'll be asked to find one additional source off the internet and another from the shelves of the library (a printed source).
Internet research is fraught with problems. Online sources always need to be corroborated, verified. I'll show you in class examples of the unreliability of standard online sources like Wikipedia. A cynic once said that freedom of the press belongs to those who own the presses, and online sources are notoriously manipulable by their owners or those with whom the owners sympathize. NEVER trust a web source without verifying it in a printed source. Print historically has required serious work--authorial, editorial, mechanical, distributive--and as a result print is intrinsically more reliable, more the product of checks and balances. Until recently that was also true of newspapers. Today, any fool can throw up a page on the web (witness this one!). Print is more difficult, but also more stable and durable. Despite what you see in Harry Potter, the pages of a printed book never change, but the pages of a website can change swiftly and radically. The web is very seductive and offers to supply whatever you want it to. This is not good for you! The trick in making a web source useable is to compare and corroborate it. You may find dozens of pages all parroting the same claim. They probably all copied each other. Try to find evidence contradicting that claim, falsifying it. Then go to print sources to corroborate, preferably books and articles rather than magazines and newspapers. Until recently print sources were more independent, but alongside many other criticisms a good Ted Talk by Sharyl Attkisson recently calls that independence into question. My Webliography gives you dozens of resources (called bibliographies) that will lead you to print. There are also many online search engines that have analyzed printed material, from newspapers to literary journals. Although the managers of those search engines ought to be neutral, there is increasing fear that some are not. Try the same search on different engines and compare the results. Find and bookmark the online tools that work on the material you need. Know the standard printed reference tools, encyclopedias, directories, indexes, concordances, glossaries, gazetteers. Our library is well-stocked. Learn how the Library of Congress cataloging system works. Develop a spatial memory for the parts of the library that shelve the kinds of books you'll need in order to corroborate your research. Know where back issues are kept of the journals in our field.
On the day after you turn in your first report, you'll be doing a scavenger hunt in the library, and your knowledge of its organization will give you a serious head start.
Learn how to scan a printed book or article quickly. Who published it? Some presses have better reputations than others. Check its date of publication. Newer isn't always better, but if the book is well done, it should take account of previous work. Use the index to verify this. Scan chapter titles to size up the approach to the topic. Look at the bibliography or list of works consulted to see how extensively the book is contextualized in the work of other writers. Then ask, what kind of book is it? Is it primary source (an edition of writings valuable in themselves) or a secondary one? If a secondary source, is it a history, a biography, a collection of criticism? What kind of history? What kind of biography? What kind of criticism? If the book seems especially pertinent to your interests, search for and read one or two reviews of it in the journals. Has it been widely cited by other authors? Use the citation indexes to determine this.
If your first short report repeats errors you've lifted from the web without verifying, I'll identify them, and you'll be penalized.
The key to all research is reading, and this course focuses intensely on reading--reading (mainly) Jane Austen. You may need to spend a full hour in the library reading and scanning books and articles in order to come up with just one citable fact pertaining to your chosen topic. That may seem inefficient, but it isn't. It's the real purpose of education--not just mining facts, but developing a brain capable of holding, evaluating, and arranging them. Memory is also indispensable. If you forget immediately what you've seen, you'll waste a lot of time finding it again. If your memory isn't infallible, develop a system of notetaking. It will save you hours when you come to writing up a major paper.
Then Paper Two asks you to consider Austen's portrayal of women in Northanger Abbey. Are they timeless or dated, individuals or stereotypes? Research is less indispensable here than is a close understanding of the novel and the ability to build a coherent argument backed by evidence from your reading. No amount of research can replace a coherent thesis of your own, and we'll discuss how to develop such a thesis in class.
Paper Three, however, returns to the world of carefully vetted printed criticism, published essays that--for all their careful review--may not always be exempt from serious problems. You are asked to read a handful of secondary criticism and locate a critic whose approach or argument or evidence seems to you seriously to miss the point, to be deficient or even simply wrong--someone you'd like to have an argument with. This paper is your chance to have that argument, to criticize the critic. A successful paper will focus on the intellectual shortcomings of the essay under examination. What should the author have said or thought instead of what he did? Don't fall for cheap tactics like name-calling or the straw man argument. Do your best to recount the critic's points and then show where, if he had talked to you first, he could have improved his piece. The main focus for this paper is Sense and Sensibility, about which hundreds of articles have been published. All you need is one defective one.
Paper Four is a creative work, not a research piece at all, but all your work reading primary sources so far will enable you to imitate the style and manner of an early nineteenth-century letter writer like those we find in Pride and Prejudice.
But Paper Five, the final research paper, will require you to apply all the research skills you've developed through the semester. The topic will be determined by the Jane Austen Society of North America for their 2019 International Essay Contest, and will be announced in late October. The submission guidelines for 2019 will be listed online, but we'll review conventions of citation for your bibliography of works cited. I'll meet with you individually to discuss your approach to the topic and what role research will play in your final product. Six to eight pages, typed, double-spaced. Due in class on Friday, November 30th. When you present these papers in class, we'll ask one of your classmates to appraise your research skills, not just your thesis and argument. Impress them.