Graduate Seminar Paper

STRUCTURE: 

In its simplest form, a substantial argumentative research paper unfolds roughly as follows, though you have plenty of freedom to tweak and adapt this model as you see fit.

1. A dynamic introduction that strategically frames the broader project. Here, you might combine strategies that include signaling historical or cultural context, intentionally summarizing the book with an eye on your eventual argument, and/or offering a sense of the continuing relevance of your text. As Eric Hayot notes in Elements of Academic Writing, the goal of the introduction is to engage and teach: get us on board and give us enough background to feel comfortable and informed as we navigate what comes next. The third key introductory strategy, which Hayot refers to as “locating” comes near the end of the introduction.
2. Typically near the end of the introduction, you include what I call “Dueling” thesis statements that reflect the research conversation you’re engaging (what I call the “conversation-based thesis”) and the ways in which you hope to extend that conversation into fresh ground (your argumentative thesis). This complex thesis often unfolds over a paragraphs of its own. You can also think of this section along the lines of the move that Swales describes as “occypying a niche,” or carving out your own unique research space. I often this of this section as giving yourself some elbow room as a critic.
   • Feel free to borrow and adapt the following templates. Please note that these are extremely truncated: your Dueling Ts will be 3-5 sentences up to a whole paragraph. That said, the templates off a good place to start, even if we fill them out immediately. First, here’s the key to the template:X = Your Text
     Y = Your Theoretical / Methodological / Historical / Author/Biography Background / Theme
     A = Critical Common Sense–how critics have engaged the work in general and / or your research question in particular.
     B = Your Unique Argument–what you’re adding to the conversationTemplate 1 (simple, just the bones): In what follows, I trace [X] in the context of [Y]. Critics have duly noted [A]. However, I hope look more closely at a specific part of [X] to offer an account of how [B].

     Template 2 (more complex):This essay explores [X] in the context of [Y]. Though critics have noted [A], they have not yet explored (or I would like to explore more fully) [background for B]. Closer attention to [specific aspects X] reveal that, rather than simply show how [paraphrase of A], the author actually suggests that [specific statement of B]

     Each of these templates offers a clear articulation of one might enter a given research conversation, indicating the broader theoretical context, the more specific conversation surrounding your text/author, and also showing how you plan to extend that conversation.

3. After your thesis section, you will move on to the first section of the paper. In a long paper, this might be a distinct sub-section, but it could also flow directly from the introduction. Because you just articulated the governing thesis idea, it’s important to transition back to some foundational ideas here. Typically the first section after the intro does not dive right into the target text. Instead, it tends to fill in details on what the BEAM model identifies as the M and A. Sources. Both of these things will have been hinted at in the intro as you do the work of “teaching” and “locating.” But expansion is often necessary. You might have also covered the B–background–sufficiently in the intro, but perhaps you need to expand. And then there is the key clarification of informing theoretical ideas and gestures to what other critics have said in more detail and how that relates to your own argument. This isn’t often the largest section of the paper, but it’s important! This section combines the moves we practiced in the OCC and WWT papers.
4. The next section of your paper delves more fully into close reading: recounting carefully chosen evidence from the text that supports your thesis and digging into that evidence via careful close reading.
5. Papers conclude by taking the reader somewhere new rather than simply repeating what came before. Here, you might focus on what makes the argument (and text) relevant in the present. Why should we care? You can briefly recap the argument, but try to do something fresh in the conclusion–end with a new and surprising piece of evidence that might not have fit in what came before, discuss social/political implications of the argument, etc. I also like the idea of including a final piece of analysis in the final paragraph–something that is provocative and engaging, but that might not have fit as well in the previous section. This section is not about thinking through the topic, but thinking beyond it.

Note that some of what happens in section 4 above can also appear in section 3, and you can continue to expand theoretical ideas as you move into the primary “close reading” sections.” You’ll note that Lee, for example, sort of combines her theoretical and close reading sections into one unit on “bad” universalism and one unit on “good” universalism (sorry for the over-simplification there). This template lays out the basic moves: you establish background primarily in the intro and first section; you engage other critics via argument primarily in the intro and first section; you engage the exhibit strategically throughout, but especially in the third section. You clarify you methodological or theoretical approach as needed primarily in the intro, but also perhaps in section 2. In other words, Engaging with the text, providing background, introducing theoretical ideas, and close reading can happen just about anywhere in a seminar paper, but each section does tend to have a primary purpose.