A Word About the Term Paper

The point of the term paper assignment is to give students the opportunity to conduct some independent library research into a topic of special interest to them within the boundaries established by the subject matter of the course. It is expected to help students:

1. to cultivate knowledge of and skills in searching printed media (books, journals, articles, etc.);
2. to think about, prepare, and present a theme or idea of individual interest; and
3. to demonstrate personal depth of understanding of the themes advanced and developed within the lectures by applying them to a topic of each student’s choosing.

Completion of this assignment will require spending time in the library; and, depending upon each student’s prior experience, working with the staff of the Libraries to take fullest advantage of the Libraries’ resources. Indeed, as noted in the Detailed Course Outline, during one week of this semester our scheduled recitation sections will meet at the Libraries for “information technology” (IT) seminar instruction by the Library staff. Every student will be responsible for preparing an Annotated Bibliography that will be due several weeks before the final paper is due, and will be graded. Each student will also be invited to submit a "draft" of the paper to be evaluated and graded, before handing in his/her final submission. Students may find it helpful to consult this webpage’s link to “Course Bibliography” for sources to start their own research, or to determine the appropriate intellectual boundaries for it.

All students should the important web site listed below:

http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/infotree/WorldCivResource.html

Term Paper Guidelines

General Instructions:

1. The term paper is expected to be a minimum of five full double-spaced typewritten pages in length (excluding cover page and bibliography), and a maximum of seven pages. Students MUST use a 12-point font, in an easy-to-read, serif-style typeface. Margins may be no larger than one inch.
2. The term paper should be prepared on unlined white paper, typed single-sided. The cover sheet should identify your topic, and include your name, the date submitted, and your section instructor’s name. Staple the top left corner of the paper, and do not use a plastic cover, paper binder or folder, or any other binding system.
3. Every student’s paper must have a bibliography, prepared in standard academic format. Each student will have submitted an Annotated Bibliography for grading: this should NOT be submitted as the bibliography that accompanies the final submission. Rather, the bibliography should be edited into standard bibliographic citation format. It is assumed that you will consult the books assigned for the lecture course, so those sources SHOULD NOT be included in your bibliography, unless you are refuting a point made by the author of your textbook. You are expected to go well beyond your assigned text in researching your paper topic. Extensive citations or footnotes from the course text book will result in a lowering of your grade.
4. Encyclopedia (print or electronic) may be consulted, but you may not cite an encyclopedia as a source in your paper or its footnotes, and you may not include an encyclopedia in your bibliography.
5. The Internet should be searched for maps, plans, or photographic illustrations to support your narrative. A minimum of one Internet source must be included in your paper. However, Internet sources are limited to a total of three.
6. The bibliography must contain a minimum of:

1. one book on archeology or cultural anthropology
2. one book on history, sociology, or technology
3. two articles from standard (i.e., refereed) academic journals, i.e., those with an identified scholarly editorial board
4. a map or other illustration as noted in # 5, above, and
5. as many other sources as you deem appropriate for your subject matter.

7. It is expected that all papers will make extensive use of footnotes to document the sources of ideas. Entire passages may be quoted from a single source, but students are advised to consult a University librarian and their English instructor to be certain of accepted procedure in citing and footnoting their papers. Plagiarism must be scrupulously avoided. Any student found to have plagiarized material in a term paper will be awarded automatically a grade of F for the entire course, before other punitive remedies are pursued.
8. All students must participate in a Library Orientation/Instructional Technology seminar, taught by professional staff of University Libraries. These seminars have been scheduled for you to correspond with your regularly scheduled recitation sections. Normal recitation sections are suspended during this week of the semester to allow students to attend these special seminars. Attendance will be taken. Students who miss a scheduled Library Orientation/IT workshop will be docked one full grade group for non-attendance: if your paper would have earned a "B" but you skipped the Library Orientation/IT Workshop, you will only be awarded a "C." The schedule is as follows:

(L-1) Sept 24 Mon 1:00 pm – Rachel Maloney & Cindy Tysick…Meets in Capen 127

(L-2) Sept 24 Mon 12:00 Noon – Jerry Paradise & Cindy Tysick ..Meets in Baldy 206

(L-3) Sept 24 Mon 3:00 pm – Rachel Maloney & Cindy Tysick …...Meets in Capen 127

(L-4) Sept 28 Fri 2:00 pm – Jess Kozlowski & Chris Hollister…..…Meets in Capen 127

(L-5) Sept 28 Fri 9:00 am – Jerry Paradise & Chris Hollister …..…Meets in Capen 127

(L-6) Section Cancelled

(L-7) Sept 25 Tues 1:00 pm – Rachel Maloney & Cindy Tysick……..Meets in Capen 127

(L-8) Sept 28 Fri 11:00 am – Jerry Paradise & Chris Hollister…..…..Meets in Capen 127

(L-9) Sept 27 Thurs 11:00 am – Jessica Kozlowski & Cinci Tysick ....Meets in Park 143

(L-10) Sept 27 Thurs 2:00 pm – Jessica Kozlowski & Chris Hollister.....Meets in Park 143

The Rooms in Baldy and Park are outside the Undergraduate Libraries in the buildings designated. Capen 127 is accessed from inside the UGL, at the rear of the first floor beyond the reserve desk.

9. Competent expository writing is expected, and will affect your grade. Points will be deducted for poor grammar, incorrect sentence structure, and consistently bad punctuation. Give careful thought to paragraph development as it affects the presentation of your ideas. All students are encouraged to share this assignment with their instructors in ENG 101 or ENG 201, and to ask them for assistance.

10. All students must submit an electronic copy of their paper to a service named “Turnitin,” that checks papers for originality of content. Here are the instructions for submitting papers to “Turnitin.”

All students are expected to submit their own papers to the turnitin website.  It is the students' responsibility to submit their work electronically to turnitin by the applicable due date.  To submit work students must go to www.turnitin.com and enter a class ID and password in order to access their recitation section instructor.  Class ID's and passwords will be provided to students by their recitation instructor because these are specific to each TA.  (No one uniform ID and password will be used for the entire World Civ Course. Therefore it is each student's responsibility to find out the ID and password from their recitation instructor.) 

When you enter the website you will input the ID and password and this will allow access to the course file area.  Then students are required to upload a copy of their paper in a manner similar to attaching a file to an email.  All
necessary steps and instructions are listed on Turnitin.  The website accepts submissions in the following formats:

MS Word, WordPerfect, RTF, PDF, PostScript, HTML, and plain text (.txt)

Any questions that arise or trouble using the software should be directed to your recitation instructor or to the Head TA, Jerry Paradise at gep3@buffalo.edu

All Instructors will go over the term paper requirements in detail during the fifth week of class. Come to class with your questions.

Content of the Term Paper

A basic premise of this section of UGC 111 “World Civilizations I” is that we can come to know a great deal about a civilization through the study of its major cities. In addition, every good research paper has a particular theme. That theme is connected to a research question that reflects the individual student’s specific interests. For example, an intended Pharmacy major might want to know how an ancient civilization developed cures, treatments, or medicines to fight disease. An Accounting major might be interested in systems of commercial notation, or banking. An intended Music major might want to investigate the process by which musical instruments were created, or under what circumstances they might have been used. Someone interested in Child Psychology might want to look into how children were reared or educated. A Civil Engineering major might wish to explore how rivers were bridged, or irrigation trenches were cut. The point is that each student’s paper benefits from having a particular theme.

The best way to arrive at your theme is to first consider the specific area(s) of investigation in which YOU are interested. Once identified, a second question (which you should ask a librarian, read encyclopedia entries, and check out on the Internet) is, “How easy will it be for me to locate information about this subject(s)?” One good way to formulate your research question is: “Considering the ancient people of _________ , how did they _____________________?”

This question implies both structure and function. That is, to accomplish almost any human purpose, there is a physical setting, and the use of tools and implements of some sort. Further, the “how to” component of this question implies the existence of some sort of technique or process.

The research question has no meaning apart from a cultural context. Students are obliged to select an ancient city/culture, recognizing that different peoples rose to the same challenges in different ways.

Selecting a Culture and City

From the list below, select one city for detailed investigation. In your term paper, as a minimum treatment comment on the following:

• Geographic features of the location of the city, advantages associated with that location, etc.
• Estimated total population or number of households or family groupings for the time period we are studying
• Occupations of the original of historic populace, e.g., subsistence farming, hunting and gathering, herding, trading, etc.
• Nature and influence of religion/religious beliefs, significant folklore and/or legends
• Structure of secular/civil authority, brief description of governance system
• Noteworthy achievements in the arts (music, poetry, painting, sculpture, other?), with special attention to architecture and building technology. What were major communal buildings made of, how were they constructed, etc.? What do we know of the ordinary dwellings of the people?
• Nature, description, and illustration of the city’s physical form, its plan or layout.

Most important, based upon your research, your paper should summarize the importance of your subject city and its civilization to our study and understanding of ancient cultures around the globe.

Select any one of the following as your subject city:

Angkor Thom (Asia)

Timbuktu (Africa)

Baghdad (Persia)

Alexandria (Egypt)

Jerusalem (Near East)

Constantinople (Asia Minor)

Cuzco (Peru)

Chang’an (China)

Mohenjo-Daro (India)

Carthage (Mediterranean, No. Africa) 

To avoid a situation where students researching a city would have to compete for our Library’s only copy of certain books, I have asked the Library staff to prepare a non-circulating Course Reserve shelf at the UGL Circulation Desk. You can find out the contents of that shelf by checking the following website:

https://bison.buffalo.edu:4443/F/?func=find-b-0&local_base=UBRSV

Students are advised not to overlook the "Bibliography" at the end of relevant chapters of the Spodek textbook for sources to begin their bibliographic searches. Standard academic practice will reveal that the bibliography contained in any book you are consulting for this project should be checked, since it is likely to lead you to further sources.

If you know that a book exists (because you have found it cited in a book you have) but it is NOT owned by Lockwood Libraries at UB, see a reference librarian to take advantage of Inter-Library Loan Services.

The University Libraries staff has taken the time and effort to compile a webpage for students, linked to this course webpage, as noted above. It contains hints that will be helpful to the conduct of your research: make wise use of it.

CITING INTERNET RESOURCES

As a result of the relative newness of Internet resources, at present there is no single accepted practice for citing Internet resources. Fortunately, there are a number of useful web sites and a few printed resources that one may consult in order to follow a generally accepted style of Internet citation.

One of the best and most detailed set of Web guidelines for citing Internet resources is the MLA Style: Documenting Sources from the World Wide Web by the Modern Language Association of America.

This site provides you with very specific and useful guidelines for many different types of materials you may need to cite in your bibliography.

First, go to the site: http://www.mla.org/main_stl.htm

Then, scroll down to the section, "Documenting Sources from the World Wide Web." In this section you will find many useful examples of Internet citations, including Internet books, articles, poems, personal and professional sites, and discussion list postings. These examples are very clear and will guide you directly in citing items from the Internet in your bibliography.

For beginning-level writers, the above MLA Style site is an excellent one to use FOR INFORMATION ON ALL BIBLIOGRAPHIC ENTRIES.

However, more advanced writers may wish to consult a printed source that contains more examples of Internet resources. A very useful book, The Columbia Guide to Online Style by Janice R. Walker and Todd Walker may be consulted in the following UB Libraries. [Please note that the following are NON-CIRCULATING] à

UNDERGRADUATE PN171 .F56 W35 1998 ARCH/PLAN Reference PN171 .F56 W35 1998

Reference

LAW Reference PN171.F56 W35 1998 LOCKWOOD Reference PN171 .F56 W35 1998

SCI/ENGR Reference PN171 .F56 W35 1998

It is important to note several things about citing Internet resources:

à Internet sources often do NOT have stated personal authors or dates on their sites. Do not

be concerned if you cannot locate them on the page. If you wish, you might go back in the

site to see if you can locate the organization that issued the site. This can be done by going to the

location’s address for the site and seeing if you minimize the site’s address to its main address.

à Whichever style you employ, it is very important to include the date you viewed the Internet

site. This is crucial as it is possible that the content, format, or the whole site may change

between when you looked at and when a reader may choose to look at the site. By

indicating when you looked at the site, you are informing your readers of its content at that

particular time.

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