The first deadline is going to be for you to s
The first deadline is going to be for you to submit to me one or two topics that you are interested in doing. These topics should be directly related to international relations and should be suitable for answering the five questions in the larger research paper assignment.
Don't just send me a list of topics though. For each of the topics also tell me a bit of background about it and how you think it fits into an introduction to international relations course. Also discuss what kinds of sources you'd imagine looking for to help you answer the questions. You can read more about how to find sources in the very next page after this one titled "Finding Resources for Your Research". This part of the project should probably be a page or so in length, but I'm really grading this based on quality (signs that you've put in some thought and didn't just write it five minutes before the deadline). You can earn up to 20 points for this portion of the assignment.
Every semester there are always a couple of students who run into problems with plagiarism. Sometimes it's pretty blatant – someone ran out of time and thought they'd just take half of a source and copy it into their paper to try and make up the word count. Other times, though, I think it legitimately stems from confusion that people have over what constitutes plagiarism. And I totally get that. It's not always clear, for example, how much you have to change someone's words to make them your own. I have a couple of resources for you.
First, a video I made:
Second, I would strongly recommend looking over the following website before you start writing your paper. It will not only help you in this class, but in all your future classes as well. When in doubt, put a citation in. If it's exact words, always use quotes. For other guidelines, check out this
http://lib.usm.edu/plagiarism_tutorial/whatis_plagiarism.html
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Introduction
The good news about doing an annotated bibliography is that there are tons of resources on the internet to help you out. I'll link a bunch below for you to peruse at your own pace. Annotated bibliographies are not the same thing as regular bibliographies. A few things to remember specific to this annotated bibliography:
1) You should have at least five sources. You will need more than five for the final paper, but five is sufficient for this project.
2) I don't care if you use APA, MLA, Chicago or any other format for citations. Just make sure that (a) you use a recognizable form of citation and (b) that you are consistent throughout your assignment.
3) What makes an annotated bibliography different from a regular list of sources is that for each source you should be summarizing the source as well critically evaluating it. The idea is that if I were to write a paper on the same topic as you (hey, I might do that someday, you don’t know) then I should be able to read your annotation and decide “is this source useful to me and should I read it?”
Links For Annotated Bibliographies
The best link is probably this one: Link to UMUC Annotated Bibliography resourcehttp://sites.umuc.edu/library/libhow/bibliography_tutorial.cfm
Another one can be found here: Link to Notre Dame Annotated Bibliography resource https://libguides.library.nd.edu/annotated-bibliography
Both of the above have links to other places, but if you want one more, try out: Link to Purdue Annotated Bibliography Resource https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/614/01/
Finally, here are some samples from Cornell's library website:
"The following example uses APA style (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th edition, 2010) for the journal citation:
Waite, L. J., Goldschneider, F. K., & Witsberger, C. (1986). Nonfamily living and the erosion of traditional family orientations among young adults. American Sociological Review, 51, 541-554.
The authors, researchers at the Rand Corporation and Brown University, use data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Women and Young Men to test their hypothesis that nonfamily living by young adults alters their attitudes, values, plans, and expectations, moving them away from their belief in traditional sex roles. They find their hypothesis strongly supported in young females, while the effects were fewer in studies of young males. Increasing the time away from parents before marrying increased individualism, self-sufficiency, and changes in attitudes about families. In contrast, an earlier study by Williams cited below shows no significant gender differences in sex role attitudes as a result of nonfamily living.
This example uses MLA style (MLA Handbook, 8th edition, 2016) for the journal citation:
Waite, Linda J., et al. "Nonfamily Living and the Erosion of Traditional Family Orientations Among Young Adults." American Sociological Review, vol. 51, no. 4, 1986, pp. 541-554.
The authors, researchers at the Rand Corporation and Brown University, use data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Women and Young Men to test their hypothesis that nonfamily living by young adults alters their attitudes, values, plans, and expectations, moving them away from their belief in traditional sex roles. They find their hypothesis strongly supported in young females, while the effects were fewer in studies of young males. Increasing the time away from parents before marrying increased individualism, self-sufficiency, and changes in attitudes about families. In contrast, an earlier study by Williams cited below shows no significant gender differences in sex role attitudes as a result of nonfamily living."
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I've read at least 500 of these in my life and I've got a few tips for you to help you do as well as you can. I want to give everyone an A. I love A papers – they are enjoyable to read and they are much quicker to grade. Everyone wins. Here are things that will help you earn an A.
The Right Topic
Pick the right topic! It is amazing to me how many people have basically limited their grade just by choosing an inappropriate topic. What makes a topic "good"? Well it should:
Be international in scope. Don't write about something that focuses on the US. I love American politics (I teach that class too!) but for an IR paper your topic should focus on international issues.
Be contemporary. As it turns out, I also love history – I was a history major in college after all. But it is so much easier to do well on this paper by focusing on a contemporary topic.
Be able to answer all FIVE questions with it. Look over the five questions (summary, international agreements/IOs/NGOs, relevant states, theories, future of the issue). If you don't think you can answer one or more of those with your topic, it's probably not a good topic.
Talk to me about it. After reading 500+ of these I've gotten really good about seeing potential pitfalls with topic selection. Send me an e-mail. Include me in the process.
Reread That Assignment
Read the assignment thoroughly. Read it twice. Notice the MOST IMPORTANT part of the assignment: the five questions you need to answer. Make it easy on yourself and structure your paper around those five questions. Answer each for 400-500 words. Label the sections of your paper after each of them. Check out the rubric at the end of the paper. Follow it as completely as you can.
Academic Integrity
When in doubt, CITE. Every semester there are at least two or three students who receive zeros on their papers for plagiarism. Some of them knowingly plagiarized. Others failed to realize that if you directly quote someone, you need to attribute their words to them. BUT EVEN IF YOU ONLY USE THEIR IDEAS IN YOUR OWN WORDS YOU STILL NEED TO ATTRIBUTE IT TO THEM. You can do that by using footnotes or endnotes or paranthetical citation such as at the end of this sentence (Fuerstman, 2012). You can use MLA or APA or Chicago or whatever style you want, just stay consistent. And add a works cited page because you don't want the -10% penalty.
A Little Editing Goes A Long Way
Proofread, proofread, proofread. I know how hard this can be. It's best if you can finish the paper a day or two before the deadline to give yourself some space. It's a lot harder to edit something you just wrote. But even if you finish it four hours before it's due, there's one trick for editing that can help almost anyone. Read the paper out loud to yourself, slowly. The best tool you have for writing is actually your ears. You can often hear when things sound a bit off. You probably want to write a bit more formally than you talk but you'll still be able to tell if you've got typos or the wrong word in the wrong place, etc.
On the whole the papers are you usually very good, but a few key changes here and there can help everyone do better. Good luck!
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Introduction
Tell me if this sounds familiar. You've got a research paper to do. You open up Google. Or maybe Bing. But probably not Bing because no one uses Bing. Maybe DuckDuckGo if you're worried about privacy, but probably Google.
You type in your research topic. The first link is to Wikipedia. Great, you've got one source. From there you scroll through the next couple of pages, click on some stuff that looks good, and call it a day.
So what's wrong with that? Well, there are a couple of issues. First, literally anyone could be writing that stuff. Not so much the Wikipedia article – that actually has some semblance of editorial control, though it comes with its own issues. But the other stuff you're finding? It could be some wacko living in a basement in Topeka who knows as much about your topic as my dog. So unless your topic is chasing squirrels or attempting to sniff your own butt, you don't want to be listening to the guy in his basement in Topeka.
Second, even if you are getting a credible source, it may still be pretty one-sided. Imagine doing a research paper on abortion and only getting articles from a pro choice or only a pro life position. Or imagine doing a research paper on Iranian nuclear ambitions and all of your sources were from Iranian state media (or Israeli state media). You'd have a pretty crappy paper.
Now that I'm done telling you how not to find sources, here is how to go about it the right way.
Finding sources.
First off, there is absolutely nothing wrong with starting by Googling. I usually use Google twice – once at the beginning of a project to get a lay of the land and then once later on when I know what other keywords to use in the search engine.
What you really want to be using are some good databases that the college has access to. The absolute number one resource to use is the Santa Fe Library. https://www.sfcollege.edu/library/
The library homepage can be found at this link. Our librarians are extremely talented and they are way better than I am at finding sources because they are professionals and I'm an amateur.
Next, I am going to link you to some resources that other individuals and/or colleges have put together. These are all pages with links to other places. Sadly, you won't end up having access to some of the databases, but you never know until you try!
Additional Links
The first link is to a really great http://www.internationalaffairsresources.com/
resource full of other sources on international affairs, put together and maintained by Dr. Wayne A. Selcher, Professor Emeritus of International Studies.
http://libguides.bc.edu/InternationalStudies/FindArticles
Boston College's Library has a page of resources for international studies research as well. http://guides.library.duke.edu/recommended-internationalrelations
Another library with a good IR-specific page is Duke University, found here. http://libguides.usc.edu/c.php?g=234935&p=1559217
Finally, USC's library has a very exhaustive list of other databases here.
Credible Sources
Regardless of where you find your source, you want to make sure you're a critical reader of it. What that means is you want to ask yourself things like "what was the author's intent?", "what is the context in which this document was produced?" and "who was the intended audience"? As an example of why you want to do this, imagine that you were a historian trying to recreate the narrative of a famous relationship that ended really badly. If your only source is one of the people's diaries and you accept it uncritically then you're probably going to end up with a very one-sided version of events.
Hopefully those links are a good start for you. Remember that between our excellent reference librarian and e-mails to me you have lots of resources at the college.
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INR 2002 PAPER ASSIGNMENT
Paper Basics
In the latter portion of the course we are going to consider a number of contemporary issues in international relations. Some of them are extremely broad (international political economics, war), others are just somewhat extremely broad (nuclear proliferation, terrorism). Either way, we are only going to scratch the surface of these issues. I would like to give you an opportunity to dig a little deeper into some issue in contemporary international relations. In this assignment I ask you to pick a topic of interest – it could be something like a specific event (a war between two countries, a nonmilitary conflict like Iran’s potential nuclear weapons, etc.) or something broader but thematic (global warming, the COVID pandemic). The key is going to be picking a topic that is narrow enough to deal with in an 2000-2500 word paper (that's roughly 8 to 10 pages). The topic mus be contemporary. That means it must involve events that have happened after 1989. Once you have your topic, you should use the paper to answer the following questions about it:
1) Give a BRIEF summary of your topic. What are the major relevant details about the subject? This should be NO MORE THAN 750 WORDS. That’s why you need to narrow your topic before you sit down to write your paper.
2) Are there any relevant international agreements about your topic? Has the United Nations or other IGO’s dealt with your topic? What NGO's are active in this area and what are their goals?
3) Who are the (most) relevant countries? What are their interests or goals as regards your topic? Go beyond just restating what you said in Question 1.
4) Analyze your topic from a realist and liberal perspective. How would each approach explain the way countries and individuals have behaved in your topic?
5) What is the future of your topic?
Possible Topics
You can choose from the list below or choose your own. A list of possible topics might include: relations between South Korea and North Korea, relations between the US and Cuba, the Russia-Ukraine crisis, Iran (or North Korea) and nuclear proliferation, Brexit, NAFTA/USMCA, Security Council reform, anything to do with the recent 2008 economic crisis (i.e. not domestic) such as the European debt crisis, the COVID pandemic, cybersecurity, global poverty, development in the global South, AIDS or any other epidemic (but focus on the international relations of it and not the science), the looming demographic crisis in economically developed countries, immigration INTERNATIONALLY (i.e. not specifically about the US), water access, etc. As a reminder, it must be a contemporary topic, meaning it involves things that have happened since 1989 or later.
You can structure your paper any way you see fit, so long as you address the above questions. I would suggest breaking your paper down into an introduction in which you lay out what will be in the rest of the paper, five separate sections (each dealing with a question) and a conclusion, to match the attached rubric. Make sure to read the rubric at the end of the paper assignment for guidance on what each section should contain. Please note that you should not just write a five paragraph essay with each of the above questions being a paragraph. Generally each question should take you several/numerous paragraphs to answer.
Formatting
The total length of the paper is 2000 to 2500 words. That is roughly 8 to 10 double-spaced pages with normal font and margins. Please put the word count on the front page of your paper. The word count does not include the works cited page. Pretty much every word processing program has a way of automatically counting words for you. If you are unsure how to do this, let me know and I will show you. Will I count all of your words to verify your total? Probably not. Unless you hand in something that is clearly not the length listed on the front page. I know most people start out by aiming for the minimum number of words, but given the scope of this paper topic you will likely have no difficulty meeting the word count. While you will lose points for being under 2000 words, if a paper has less than 1500 words it will automatically fail the assignment.
Number of Sources
I am asked pretty much every semester some version of the question "how many sources does my paper need to have?" This is a weird question to me, since the honest answer is "how ever many you need to write a good paper", but I get why students ask it. A little guidance is always a good thing. Let me say this, then. It would be very hard to do well on this paper with less than five academic sources (i.e. not Wikipedia, Investopedia, and other encyclopedic sources). You probably will want more than that, but at a minimum I'd be aiming for that. Once you hit five sources that doesn't mean you are done doing research – if three of your sources are all about one part of the paper then you're going to need more in total to write a compelling paper.
Citations/Plagiarism – Read this carefully
You should be using academic sources for this paper. That means that while you can consult Wikipedia as a start, you should be using additional sources, possibly including global newspapers, scholarly books and journal articles and government websites. If you are going to use web-based sources, make sure (as always) to consider who the source of the website is. Are they credible? Do they have expertise? What’s their angle or bias? MAKE SURE TO USE IN-TEXT CITATIONS in your paper. I don’t particularly care what format they are (MLA vs APA vs Chicago) just so long as (a) you stay consistent in the paper and (b) I can figure out how to find each source myself if I so choose.
Remember that whenever you use someone’s idea, either in a direct quote or reworded yourself, you should use a citation. Using someone's words or ideas without citation is PLAGIARISM and doing so will lead to a minimum of a zero on the paper and quite possibly failure of the class. Please include a Works Cited page IN ADDITION TO the in-text citations. Failure to do so will result in a 10% penalty.
For more information on citations, see the page in the Research Paper Module titled "Citations and Plagiarism".
Three Stages of the Assignment
The absolute hardest part is finding a good topic. After that it's just a matter of finding some relevant primary and secondary sources and then writing the stupid paper (I hate that part, too). The assignment is going to be done in three parts.
First Assignment
The first deadline is going to be for you to submit to me one or two topics that you are interested in doing. These topics should be directly related to international relations and should be suitable for answering the five questions in the larger research paper assignment. Don't just send me a list of topics though. For each of the topics also tell me what kinds of sources you'd imagine looking for to help you answer the questions. You can read more about how to find sources in the very next page after this one titled "Finding Resources for Your Research". This part of the project should probably be a page or so in length, but I'm really grading this based on quality (signs that you've put in some thought and didn't just write it five minutes before the deadline). You can earn up to 20 points for this portion of the assignment.
Second Assignment
A month after the first assignment is due (I promise to grade them very quickly for you), you'll have the second one due. In this assignment you will submit to me an annotated bibliography of sources you plan on using for your paper. An annotated bibliography is not the same thing as a regular bibliography (or a list of sources). You can use ANY citation format you want – MLA, APA, Chicago. Doesn't matter so long as you're consistent and so long as I can track down the source myself should I want based on what you've turned in. If you're wondering what an annotated bibliography is, that's a good question. See the page a few pages down titled "What is an Annotated Bibliography" for more, but in brief, the idea is that if I were to write a paper on the same topic as you (hey, I might do that someday, you don’t know) then I should be able to read your annotation and decide “is this source useful to me and should I read it?” For this assignment you should include a minimum of 5 sources (not including non-scholarly ones like Wikipedia). This portion of the assignment is worth up to 40 points.
Third Assignment
This is what it has all been building towards. Write the paper and submit it. It's worth up to 260 points with the rubric as follows:
Paper Rubric
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