Soci–229 Final Evaluations
GUIDELINES FOR FINAL EVALUATIONS
Final Paper
Here’s a refresher from your final paper proposal guidelines:
As detailed in the course syllabus, your final paper must be related to, or shed light on, the politics of exclusion as conceptualized in this class. Your topic does not need to be tethered to the present day or wedded to any specific intersection of time and space—i.e., as long as you are explicit about your analytic choices, you are free to broaden your temporal horizon. Moreover, you are free to revisit or build on any of the case studies covered in class (e.g., Trumpism, the far right in Europe, the electoral conquests of the BJP in India, and so on and so forth). If you choose to go this route, you must engage with supplementary studies or research programs that go beyond our core reading list.
Expectations for Final Presentation
You must prepare a presentation that provides a preliminary overview of your term paper. Presentations must last \(\approx\) 5-8 minutes or a penalty will be applied. To ease interpretation, please prepare a slide deck that includes—but is not necessarily limited to—the following items:
A title slide that summarizes your project and provides a succinct, high-level answer to the question: “what is your presentation about?”
A slide (or set of slides) that clearly presents the research question(s) guiding your project.
A literature review that situates your work within a broader body of research. Here, you should concisely review the extant literature1 and point to potential “gaps” or lacunae that your project will address.2
- A series of slides that presents your preliminary argument—i.e., how is \(x\), your phenomenon of interest, linked to the the politics of exclusion as conceptualized in this class?
- A conclusion slide that distills key takeaways from the presentation and answers the question: “what should the audience remember about my findings and my broader topic of interest?”
Beyond following the structure detailed above, you will be evaluated on:
Your delivery—that is, the clarity and concision of your script; the deployment of effective transitions between slides; and how well you manage time.
Your command of the presentation material—that is, your familiarity with \(x\), your phenomenon of analytic interest, as well as the evidence informing your analyses.
The design of your deck—that is, whether you avoid clutter on slides; use effective headlines and titles; and ensure that slides are easy to read and visually engaging. For more suggestions, review this.
Structure of the Final Paper
The Introductory Section
In your introduction, you should clearly and precisely discuss the research question animating your project. Your opening paragraphs must briefly summarize the relevant literature you are engaging with and offer a clear roadmap for the exposition to follow: what is the central question, puzzle, problem, or idea being addressed? What are the key claims being made or propositions being adjudicated? How will different theoretical perspectives and conceptual frameworks be synthesized to advance your arguments regarding \(x\), your phenomenon of interest? Answering these questions is essential.
Literature Review
In your second section, you should provide a more detailed overview or exegesis of the existing literature. How have other scholars studied \(x\)? What conclusions have they drawn? What are the evidentiary bases for these conclusions or claims? Identify some of the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments pervading the extant literature. Are there any “gaps” worth filling?
The Central Argument
You should apply—and ideally, synthesize—at least two foundational constructs covered in Part I of this course (e.g., populism, nationalism, authoritarianism, fascism, gender and sexuality, boundaries) to clarify your phenomenon of interest. In crafting your argument, you must be attuned to the supply and demand sides of exclusionary politics. Moreover, you should draw on some of the core readings covered in class—although the best papers will weave in supplementary material as well. You are free to use publicly available data to advance your central argument, but this is not required. That said, adducing some “empirical” evidence (e.g., by citing public opinion or sociodemographic data) or using exemplars (e.g., theoretical models that illustrate the point being made) may be helpful. More generally, although some of the concepts discussed in Part I are contested and multivocal in nature, you should not mischaracterize any of the arguments sketched by the scholars we have engaged with in class.
Formatting Conventions
The final paper should be 10-15 pages in length, inclusive of references. The text must be double-spaced and formatted in a 12-point Garamond or Times New Roman font. Margins should be set to 1 inch on all sides (top, bottom, left, and right). You are free to use either an APA or ASA citation style to manage references and bibliographies.
If you haven’t done so already, you may want to invest in Zotero to manage your citations.
You must use subheadings to organize your arguments.