Goal Usually Requires Careful Chinese Cultural Re

Paper Topic: Of your own choosing. You should develop an issue related to but not duplicating the course material (Chinese art from the Neolithic period to the 18th century) and submit the topic and your working bibliography (at least 3 sources) by August 25. The topic may be changed or developed as your research makes appropriate. Please make good use of provided references materials and digital resources available through the library website and major museum sites. Typical topics for term papers (among many other possibilities) might include a close study of a single monument or work of art, examination of developments within a single innovative artistic style, a particular aspect of a single artist’s work, or a carefully delimited discussion about the development of a particular type of subject matter, to mention only a few possibilities. The grade will be based on your clarity of presentation, perceptive use of existing scholarship, effectiveness of the evidence you present, the quality and persuasiveness of your argument, and the soundness of your conclusions.

In your research, use all the resources available to you in the library and on the web to find additional material about the topic in the form of books, articles, and images.

Your final paper, like all good writing, should be organized to tell a story or to solve a problem, with an introduction, presentation of the evidence, and clear conclusion. Achieving this goal usually requires careful editing and some rewriting, so don’t wait until the night before the paper is due to start writing, but budget your research time so that you can get to work on your draft as early as possible. Please edit the paper carefully and critically. This will probably lead you to do some reorganization, so please leave yourself adequate time to do so.

Technical matters:

The paper should be roughly 6-8 pages in length. Longer is acceptable, if needed, after editing, but not required.

Please type your paper in a font no smaller than 12 pitch, double spaced, and paginated.

Please use the standard scholarly note and bibliography format and cite all your sources. Include both notes and bibliography. You may use the textbook as a model for note and bibliography format. All sources, including online ones, should be documented.

Be careful and critical of your sources, especially online sources. Wikipedia is not scholarly and should not be cited as a primary source, although the better articles sometimes have bibliography that is well worth consulting. Academic, museum, and peer-reviewed sources should be your primary references. When in doubt, please ask.

Please include illustrations of the works of art you discuss or that support your argument. You should identify each illustration in a caption or list of illustrations in a format similar to what you see in the textbook. In addition to artist, title, medium and format, date, and dimensions, you should include the collection that owns the work, if known, and the source of your illustration (whether print and internet). Please do not insert the illustrations in the text, but append them at the end.