The Curious Researcher, Introduction and Chapter 1

1.  Read the Introduction and Chapter 1, pages 1-48, in The Curious Researcher.  You are not required to perform all of the exercises, but please read through all of them.  You’ll only be required to do Exercises 1, 1.1 and 1.4, so read through those carefully.

This week, you will choose your research topic and begin researching as guided by the textbook.  In choosing your research topic, please keep the following in mind:

-Your research must center around a topic related to Race and Justice in the United States.

-Feel free to use Matthew Coan, our reference librarian, as a resource.  He has included a special link to libraries and research on our course page.

-In selecting your topic, please see Potential Research Topics(1).docx for a list of possible research questions.

2.  Complete Exercise 1, “This I Believe,” pages 1-2 (See Exercise 1 Assignment below for details and submission).

3.  Complete Exercise 1.1, “Building an Interest Inventory,” pages 23-26 (See Exercise 1.1 below for details and submission).

4. Complete Exercise 1.4, “Research Proposal,” page 45 (See Research Proposal Assignment below for details and submission).

The Research Proposal

1 Page, Times New Roman Font, 12 pt.

Double-space / Standard Margins

Write a brief proposal that outlines your research plan.  It should include the following:

1.  Focusing question

2.  Primary purpose

· Explore.  What are additional questions that most interest you and might help you discover the answers to your research question?

· Argue.  What is your tentative main claim or thesis?

· Analyze.  What theory about your topic are you testing?

3.  What, if any, prior beliefs, assumptions, preconceptions, ideas, or prejudices do you bring to this project?  What personal experiences may have shaped the way you feel?

James Baldwin: “Notes of a Native Son”

“Notes of a Native Son”

In responding to this week’s reading, please choose ONE of the questions below. Write a response, approximately 100-200 words, in which you thoughtfully and thoroughly address your chosen question.

1. How does Baldwin relate the story of his relationship with his father to the story of the relationship between black and white America?

2. In “Notes of a Native Son” (1955), Baldwin tells many stories about the hatred at the heart of race relations in midcentury America. Choose one of these stories and compare/contrast it to a recent (or current) event in the United States. How are these situations similar? How are they different? In your opinion, have issues of race and justice changed since 1955?

3. Near the end of the essay, Baldwin states: “This relation prohibits, simply, anything as uncomplicated and satisfactory as pure hatred. In order to really hate white people, one has to blot so much out of the mind – and the heart – that this hatred itself becomes an exhausting and self-destructive pose. But this does not mean, on the other hand, that love comes easily: the white world is too powerful, too complacent, too ready with gratuitous humiliation, and, above all, too ignorant and too innocent for that.” What is your response to this statement? Do you identify with what he is saying? Use an example from your own life to support or refute his statement.