1. Recipe for a Paper
• A group of primary sources with clearly defined
boundaries (chronological, authorial, thematic)
• A group of scholarly secondary sources that can
shed light on your primary sources
– Note: For this assignment, I’m going to require that
these be scholarly articles or books, rather than web
pages
• Examination of a class theme
• A Set of Productive Questions

2. Class Themes
• 1-2 PM Section • 2-3 PM Section
• Consumerism • Moral panics
• •Moral panics • •Children and advertising
• •Consumer inequality
• •Parenting styles
• •Consumption
• •Censorship • •Propaganda and war
• •Discrimination (race or gender) • •Innocence
• •Change over time • •Parenting styles
• •Agency in children • •Agency
• •Labor / leisure/ fun • •Place of the child in the family
• •Gender roles
• •Technology
• •Race/ethnicity
• •Stereotypes • •Child labor – play – leisure – education
• •Advertising • •Emotional labor – child performers – beauty pageants
• •Income inequality/class/privilege • •Play
• •Innocence • •Separation of children’s culture from adult
• •Adult nostalgia • •Religion
• •Technology gap
• •War and violence
• •Adult nostalgia
• •Propaganda/indoctrination • •Class/privilege/money
• •Generational gap
• •Sports
• •Entertainment produced by adults for kids vs. kids’ self-
entertainment

3. Starting Points
• Group 1: “Wall-E”
• Group 2: Pokemon
• Group 3: “The Cosby Show”
• Group 4: Dr. James Dobson, Dare to Discipline
• Group 5: Baby Einstein
• Group 6: The Case of Trayvon Martin

4. Keeping a Research Log
• Web searches:
– Bookmark pages
– Keep lists of leads
– PDF or print key articles, in case they disappear
• Library Databases:
– Write down search terms you’ve exhausted
– Copy and paste names and call numbers of books
you might want

5. Initial Research Phase: The Wider Web
• Find out basic facts about your starting point: Who?
What? When? Where?
• Is the source that is your starting point part of a bigger
group of similar sources? Could any of these form a
good basis for a comparative examination?
• Note sources of information (ex: books listed in
Wikipedia “citations” section) that are more credible;
keep track of these, and try to find them later in the
library
• Use “snowball method”: as you find out more, use your
new knowledge to fuel your search

6. Research Phase 2: Finding Context in
Verified Places
• Secondary sources give you verified history,
tell you what other people think about your
primaries
• Look for secondaries that are directly about
your primaries, but also ones that might give
you historical context or a theory to work with
• Use UTNetCat subject headings to “snowball”
• Databases: ProQuest, LexisNexis, JStor, Project
Muse