- In the long part of your essay when you lay out your case, you should use quotes and information from the sources you have collected (with full humanities-style Chicago Manual citations in the form of endnotes). As I mentioned in class, quote only when you want to discuss the text you are quoting, and cite without quoting if you simply want to identify where you found information you are talking about in your own voice. You can also use images as subjects for your own discussion, in which case you can directly talk about specific things visible in the images. If you are referring to something you can assume a well-informed reader knows, you don’t need to include the image in your paper. If you want to talk about something specifically visible in a particular image or not widely known, then you should include the image in your paper. This can be in the running text or all at the end of the document, as you prefer, though please refer to figure numbers and add these numbers as image titles. You can consult any of the scholarly readings from the course for examples of how to do all of this. Any reading with images and footnotes should work for this, but look over a few. There are many different ways to present a clear position and argument in a piece of writing– some of the readings do complicated versions of this, some are more clear. What I am looking for in your paper is first of all that you satisfy the course objectives. Look in the syllabus for student learning objectives and the NAAB PC4 text. For instance, in relation to the first objective, does your paper demonstrate an understanding of the discipline and discourse of architecture and how it related to contextual forces outside of the field? Show me that you understand the material and how it relates to the conditions of the world around it. This might include intention, debates from which it emerged, what the city was like when the case study was built, how it was received, how it was used, how it relates to other works, what it means in relation to other specific issues you want to investigate, or many other aspects. The aspects you need are determined by the way you yourself frame the question you are trying to ask, investigate, explore, or understand in the essay. MAKE SURE the way you ask the question sets you up to use the issues and materials that you want to use in the paper. You are not responsible for everything you could ever write about your case study, only for the specific aspects you are exploring in this paper.
- Structure: Verify that your paper is properly structured and follows a logical progression, which leads to your specific, yet original thought.
- Clarity: Slowly read each of your sentences in your expanded draft and ask yourself– “what do I mean by…?” A helpful exercise is to write and rewrite the same concept over and over until you land on a sentence that represents your true intent and presents your idea the most clearly. Save that sentence for your final version.
- Sentence: every sentence should convey ONE IDEA – please do not try to fold too much information into one sentence. Please try to avoid “big quotes”.
- Paragraph: every paragraph represents “one step” of your argument and bleeds into the next so that together they construct a clear structure.
- Paper: the paper should have one main over-arching argument and present a cohesive whole. You idea should be supported by the 3-4 sources you collected.
– Format: the final paper should be 7-10 pages, written in Times New Roman, 12pt font, double-spaced, in .pdf or .doc format.