Write a paper in which you analyze a topic of your choice related to surveillance. The purpose of your paper will be to describe what research and writing exists about your topic, to evaluate the status of the topic right now, in Spring of 2021. Another way to put this is that youll be describing and synthesizing the scholarly conversation about your topic, which is a vital step in constructing academic arguments of your own in the future.
Here, you will demonstrate that you understand and can appropriately evaluate the current shape of a topic youve chosen as if you were going to make a full argument of your own. In so doing, you will also demonstrate that you understand the research process and can effectively evaluate library and internet sources. Select a clear, specific topic related to surveillance about which scholars and other writers have published in the last 10-15 years. We will brainstorm topics together in class, and our readings will also provide you with some good ideas. You will not search only for your exact topic, but youll need to read widely about your topic in a variety of fields and contexts.
Using the library, you will examine and evaluate the relevance of published research and writing about your topic.
Once you have a sense of the published literature about your topic, make sense of what youve read.
What are the various arguments or perspectives youve seen and how do they relate to one another?
Which sources are most representative or best and would be most useful in a research paper about your topic?
Which sources are outliers or most innovative, and why? Which sources are most traditional and mainstream?
Do any of the sources youve read suggest solutions to problems or pose new problems that future researchers will need to examine?
What questions arise as you make sense of these sources? What is missing from this discourse?
When you have a sense of whats out there and have ideas about how to organize what you have learned, you are probably ready to write. But you may discover youll need to head back into the databases more than once to understand your topic or explore again to be sure youre capturing the literature about it correctly. This is normal and to be expected.
As you write, keep evaluating your conclusions, and be prepared to revise or change your conclusions as you go. By the final draft, youll want to feel confident about your conclusions, but writing is a process in which we learn what we think as we go.
You may wonder: am I making an argument of my own in this paper?
Yes! But its an argument about the state of the scholarly conversation of the topic youve researched, not an argument of your own about the topic itself.
To narrow down your focus, use the following filters: 1) Who is doing the surveillance? 2) What is its purpose? 3) Who is the target of this surveillance? 4) What is its venue (where is it taking place)? and 5) What are its tools/means (if any)?
