POL3108H

In this course, students will improve their research skills in preparation to write their senior theses. Students will enter with a few ideas for topics about which they might like to write their theses. They will leave the class with a clear and tractable research question, a literature review that describes how this question fits in with the existing scholarly literature, and a research design that will enable them to answer the question. Along the way, they will advance their understanding of what constitutes political science research and how to conduct political science research.

Students will be graded on the basis of drafts of their annotated bibliography, literature review and research design, a class presentation of the “front half” of their senior thesis, and class participation including short weekly assignments. Students are expected to keep up with the reading and, most importantly, to begin to conduct their own independent research.

prereq: Pol sci major, honors

000440