Expectations for Term Paper
Begin your preparation by rereading the assignment.
Identifying a speech to write about
First, you need to select a speech to investigate. Any of the speeches in The Eyes on the Prize
Civil Rights Reader that we have not scheduled for class discussion will work. Look at the
syllabus for class periods to come to make certain that your speech will not be discussed in the
future. Not everything in this book of readings is a speech. You will generally find it easier to do
the assignment if you select a speech. The key, however, is not that you have a speech, but that
you have a piece of discourse that is strategic. Exclude essays that just record recollections or
histories of events. You want to look at discourse invented in the time of the movement and
designed to persuade an audience about the movement. If you have a favorite speech from the
movement that is not included in the readings, check it out with me. It will probably work.
Next, you need to research the moment of the speech. You have the books for the course:
Williams' Eyes on the Prize and even some historical essays in the Reader. But you will need to
do some library research as well. Using VICTOR, find some histories of the civil rights
movement of the 1950s and 1960s or some general histories of the fifties and sixties. Use the
indexes in these histories to find information about what is happening in the time of your speech.
In addition, look at magazines and newspapers of the month or so around your speech.
I also recommend that you read some general media papers and magazines of the time of your
event including some that had predominantly African American readers. Read both Northern
papers and Southern papers. McKeldin has a series of newspaper indexes in its reference
department and the papers are available on microform in McKeldin Library. Generally
newspapers have not established archives on the web, but if you want to try a specific newspaper
and see try either this site or this site. The African American collection is in a microfilm
collection called "Underground Newspaper Collection."
Although it is not required, you are encouraged to also look to see if earlier students of the
movement have essays about your speech. If you would like to check for such articles, I would
suggest you try Comm Search 95, a bibliography of articles in Speech Communication located on
Work Station 21 in the automated section of the McKeldin reference area. If you look up such
articles, make certain that you do not plagiarize them, just consult them and quote them as useful.
Any material drawn from such sources should be acknowledged in reference notes.
Be certain you construct a bibliography of the sources in which you find material. There is no
magic number of such sources, but I would suspect that you will find six to ten such sources.
In addition, to the bibliography, be certain that you take notes of important ideas from your
reading that help you to understand the moment. You will want to know what is going on in the
country at the time, and in the African American community. And you will want to understand
what is going on in the Civil Rights movement. Use the material on social movements from the
course and your reading of history to locate the needs of the time.
Analyzing the speech
Having visited the library, you are ready to begin to analyze the speech. What were the
demands of the situation on the speaker? Turn your historical research into an understanding
of what the speaker had to do to respond to the situation. The material from Campbell's The
Rhetorical Act and from various ways of understanding situations explored in the lectures and
class discussions will help you to make claims about the demands, and your historical research
will help you offer support for your claims. Be sure and include references (footnotes, endnotes,
or parenthetical references as called for in your form manual) for your support in your paper.
What did the speaker do to respond to these demands, and how well did s/he respond?
Your paper should identify strategies used by the speaker, tie those strategies to specific
purposes (to specific demands of the situation), and evaluate the strategies. Once again, Campbell
and the material from lectures and discussion should help you identify strategies and understand
how they respond to the demands of the situation.
I recommend that you simply make notes about your observations, understanding the speech
thoroughly before beginning to write your paper.
Drafting your paper
Begin your writing by formulating a thesis that captures your judgement about the speech. Your
thesis will judge the speech (effective or ineffective, articulate or inarticulate, for example) and in
a single sentence explain why you believe the speech deserves this judgement. The rest of your
paper will explain and support this thesis/claim about the speech. Be certain that you include a
good, interesting introduction in your paper and a conclusion that summarizes your claim and its
Revising your draft
After you have completed your paper, revise it to improve your writing and place it in the proper
form. I will be grading both the quality of your writing and your following proper form in
addition to the quality of your insight into the speech and the richness with which you reflect the
material of the course. The paper should be formatted according to either The MLA Handbook,
The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, or Kate Turabian's A
Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. If you do not own one of these,
buy it. They are available in the book stores.
The finished paper
There is no need for fancy covers, illustrations, photos, or anything like that. Include a title page,
your paper, and a bibliography. Final papers should be typed if not produced by word processing.
Staple them together. Due December 2.
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