AsAm 308 Guidelines for the Final Project Outline 1 Prepare an OUTLINE for your Argumentative Final Project Essay. Distributed March 22, 2018 Submission due at Titanium Assignments by Friday, April 6, 12pm (noon). Suggested Length: 1 page, single-spaced Note: This handout is adapted from one by historian and Harvard professor Jill Lepore. By your project thinking and writing, you can engage and practice making a contribution toward our course objectives -- This course takes Asian women living in the US as the focus of analyses of identity, culture, and political economy. We will examine works by and about Asian American women from multiple disciplines, in order to elucidate how Asian American women have been represented and treated as the objects of history and culture, as well as how Asian American women in turn shape these forces. By exploring the areas of immigration and settlement, social stereotyping, identity construction, family, community, labor, organized resistance, and cultural production, we will attempt to answer questions such as: Who are “Asian American women”? What are the commonalities and differences of racialization, gender, class, sexuality, language and culture that delineate this category? How do Asian American women negotiate the complexities of multiple identities and positions of their lived experiences, both in the United States and transnational spaces? Requirement 1: What am I going to argue? This is my THESIS. An argumentative or persuasive piece of writing must begin with a debatable thesis or claim. In other words, the thesis must be something that people could reasonably have differing opinions on. If your thesis is something that is generally agreed upon or accepted as fact then there is no reason to try to persuade people. __ In general, your thesis statement should be 1-2 sentences long and should be found at the end of your first paragraph (or occasionally your second paragraph). Requirement 2: A Well-Organized Body The body of the paper is where you flesh out your thesis and present your evidence. Most people find it helpful to outline before beginning to write. It is important that you move logically from point to point as you move from paragraph to paragraph. __ Present each of your paragraphs and its central idea. This central idea is generally expressed in a topic sentence which is usually the first or second sentence in a paragraph. Many people find it helpful to string their topic sentences together after completing an essay. This should produce a coherent paragraph beginning with your thesis statement. ! What sequence of evidence best supports your claims? ! How and where will you engage both with what other scholars have written about your subject, or broader interpretations about his period in history, or with theories about the past, or historical forces? ! Are there counter-arguments that you haven’t considered? * T.

1. AsAm 308 Guidelines for the Final Project Outline 1
Prepare an OUTLINEfor your Argumentative FinalProject
Essay. Distributed March 22, 2018
Submission due at Titanium Assignments by Friday,
April 6, 12pm (noon).
Suggested Length: 1 page, single-spaced
Note: This handout is adapted from one by historian and
Harvard professor Jill Lepore.
By your project thinking and writing, you can engage and
practice making a contribution toward
our course objectives --
This course takes Asian women living in the US as the focus of
analyses of identity,
culture, and political economy. We will examine works by and
about Asian American
women from multiple disciplines, in order to elucidate how
Asian American women
have been represented and treated as the objects of history and
culture, as well as
how Asian American women in turn shape these forces. By
exploring the areas of
immigration and settlement, social stereotyping, identity
construction, family,
community, labor, organized resistance, and cultural
production, we will attempt to
answer questions such as: Who are “Asian American women”?

2. What are the
commonalities and differences of racialization, gender, class,
sexuality, language and
culture that delineate this category? How do Asian American
women negotiate the
complexities of multiple identities and positions of their lived
experiences, both in the
United States and transnational spaces?
Requirement 1: What am I going to argue? This is my THESIS.
An argumentative or persuasive piece of writing must begin
with a debatable thesis or claim. In other words, the
thesis must be something that people could reasonably have
differing opinions on. If your thesis is something that is
generally agreed upon or accepted as fact then there is no
reason to try to persuade people.
__ In general, your thesis statement should be 1-2 sentences
long and should be found at the end
of your first paragraph (or occasionally your second paragraph).
Requirement 2: A Well-Organized Body
The body of the paper is where you flesh out your thesis and
present your evidence. Most people
find it helpful to outline before beginning to write. It is
important that you move logically from
point to point as you move from paragraph to paragraph.
__ Present each of your paragraphs and its central idea.
This central idea is generally expressed in a topic sentence
which is usually the first or second sentence in a
paragraph. Many people find it helpful to string their topic
sentences together after completing an essay. This
should produce a coherent paragraph beginning with your thesis

3. statement.
! What sequence of evidence best supports your claims?
! How and where will you engage both with what other scholars
have written about your
subject, or broader interpretations about his period in history, or
with theories about the
past, or historical forces?
! Are there counter-arguments that you haven’t considered?
* The answer is in your head.
History is by its very nature a creative enterprise. Many people
believe that if they could just find the right piece of
information in their documents, they would find the “answer” to
their paper. Information from documents is
absolutely crucial to the writing of history since it provides
evidence, but the interpretation of that evidence is what
makes a paper valuable. Interpretations can only come from
your own analysis of evidence. If the “answers” were
really in the documents, we would all compile anthologies
rather than writing papers.
AsAm 308 Guidelines for the Final Project Outline 2
Requirement 3: Draft of Your Introduction
Papers which lack coherent introductions tend to start in the
middle and trail off at the end. It is
important that you bracket your paper with an introduction
which sets out your thesis.

4. A good introduction provides you with a plan to organize the
rest of your paper by laying out the
subjects, events, or kinds of documents you will discuss to
support your thesis or develop your
topic. Put forth in your introduction what your specific
argument is, how you plan to develop
that argument, and why your argument is important enough to
defend. Your argument need not
be the last sentence of the first paragraph.
+ Optional: New Sources since your Annotated Bibliography
submission.
+ + +
Element 1 – YourThesis
a. Come with a question.
Theses are usually the answers to questions. If, for instance,
you were to ask the question, “Why
did Harvard try so hard to maintain its colonial identity beyond
the colonial period?” you might
come up with the thesis “Harvard’s commitment to ‘colonial’
architecture in the nineteenth
century was part of its attempt to distinguish itself from Old
World colleges and assert the
distinctiveness and superiority of American higher education.”
b. Theses are by nature debatable.
A fact is not a thesis. Although all are true, none of the
following are acceptable theses: “Harvard
College is in Cambridge, Massachusetts.” “Harvard College was
founded in 1636.” “Harvard
College’s architecture has changed over the centuries.” Theses
must be supported by facts, but

5. the thesis itself is an interpretation of those facts.
c. Theses are specific.
Avoid broad generalizations which tell your audience little
about your subject. “Harvard College
invented its distinctive architectural style” is much too vague to
make an effective thesis;
however “Harvard's buildings represent the persistence of a
‘colonial’ attitude toward education
that the college maintained well into the Nineteenth century” is
a debatable and specific thesis.
d. Avoid Counterfactuals.
A counterfactual is an argument based on events which didn’t
happen. For instance, one might
be tempted to argue that “If Harvard College had been founded
after 1776, its post-revolutionary
architecture would have been very different.” Although it is
often tempting to make use of
counterfactuals to “prove” a point, historians are limited to
analyzing what did happen as
opposed to what might have happened.
e. Avoid the first person and especially "I believe," "I think," "I
feel," or similar
statements.
Though you probably have opinions about your subject matter,
your work is fundamentally about
what you can prove not what you think is the case. As a result,
your thesis should avoid the first
person, and it should avoid focusing on your feelings about the
past. If you look at the thesis in
letter c above, you'll see that the author is nowhere to be found.
"Harvard College's buildings
represent" is a stronger thesis than "I think Harvard College's
buildings represent."
+ + + +

6. AsAm 308 Guidelines for the Final Project Outline 3
Here are somesuggestions for writing and refining
your essay (but do not use thesepoints
as a checklist):
• Think hard about the structure of your paper.
Don’t just assume that a paper that
just looks
at threescenes the same exact way is the best
strategy for your argument. You may decide to
“build” a layerof your argument: thus, for example,
the first and second points in your paper
might be contrastedin order to showhow the
third pointemerges as a response or
reconciliation of the first two.
• Consider your rhetorical position as you make
your claims. Keepin mind the building blocks
of appeal: logos, ethos, and pathos (logic,
authority, and emotion).
• Are your warrants (values, beliefs) broadly
accepted, or are they ideasthat themselves must
be argued? Are your assumptions conventional or
do they run against the grainof everyday
thought? You might consider thinking about
the warrants to your paper.

7. • Good introductions are like road maps; strive
to create an introduction that is like a
city grip,
not a world atlas. An introduction tells
you (the writer) where you have to go and
what you
have to do to get to your destination. A
good introduction provides you with a plan to
organize the rest of your paper by laying out
the subjects, events, or kinds of documents
you
will discuss to support your thesis or develop
your topic. Put forth in your introduction
what
your specific argument is, how you plan to develop
that argument, and why your argument is
important enough to defend. Yourargument need
not be the last sentence of the first
paragraph.
• God is in the details. Make sure that
you use as specific and concrete examples as
possible. Remember that your audience will connect
muddy language with muddy argument,
and precise usage with sharp argument.
• Do not assume that your “evidence” will stand
on its own. Guide your readers through
your
evidence. Instead of telling your readers that
your evidence “proves” your claim, showhow
and why your support is adequate for your claims.
Remember to introduce your quotes, and to
provide analysis of them. Do not summarize.
Assume that your reader has read the work
that

8. you cite, but (and this is important) does not believe
your interpretation at all—what kind of
analytical work would you need to do in order to
convince this skeptical reader of your
“correct” interpretation?
• Make sure that your paragraphs are organized,
coherent, and exhaustive. Do not move on
to
another idea in your paper until you’ve exhausted
the possibilities of the first idea. Keepin
mind that a paragraph, like a paper, should
contain an internal, coherent structure.
• Exercise care in your choice of words.
Consult a dictionary or thesaurus if you are
uncertain
about a word. As Mark Twain once
said, “The difference between the right word and the
nearly
right word is the difference between lightning and a
lightning bug.”
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