PPA 5: Thesis Statement and Preliminary Research Summary

Go back to the NYPL, The King’s Library, or the Lincoln Center and spend another 2-3 hours researching your topic. Make sure you have found the following: 3-5 Book sources that contain broader background information or context about your topic. 5-10 Scholarly essays with a more narrow focus on your topic. 5-10 Scholarly sources about your issues that are important to your topic but may not be directly about your topic. (For example, if you are writing about Hedonism in contemporary revivals of Oscar Wilde’s plays, you should have 5-10 sources about Hedonism that aren’t necessarily focused on Wilde.) You may or may not end up using all of these sources in your paper, but you should start with more than you need so that if you end up deciding that one or two of them is not so helpful, you still have more than enough to meet the required amount. (10 scholarly sources.) 1. Preliminary Research Summary: List all of your sources along with a one sentence summary of the information you found in the source and how you expect to use it in your paper. 2. Thesis Statement: Write a preliminary thesis statement for your paper. Make sure it both IDENTIFIES YOUR TOPIC and also ARTICULATES YOUR CONCLUSION about the topic based on your research thus far. Your conclusion can change later, so no pressure.