Proseminar: Cities and Immigrants - Social Studies 4219-ZP036
1. Introduction and Overview
2. Cities and immigrants in Jane the Virgin TV show.
3. Choosing an area of studies, a topic and a research question. Reading, reading, reading (and taking notes). BUW and ASC libraries. Babbie, How do we know that we know
4. West Side Story 2021 - finding, understanding the movie's social and political references: https://www.lincolncenter.org/feature/legacies-of-san-juan-hill/the-ground-beneath-lessemgreaterwest-side-storylessemgreater
5. Statistical atlas workshop
6. Choosing an area of studies, a topic and a research question. Reading, reading, reading. Umberto Eco, How to choose a topic
7. Conducting a research: academic literature versus primary sources. BUW online resources workshop
8. BA thesis format. Requirements
9. Individual consultations – the topic and literature recommendations
10. In-class presentation of the students’ research topic
11. Literature review. Preparing an annotated bibliography of 10 items of the ACADEMIC literature. Workshop
12. Preparing a research proposal. Babbie, Practice of Social Research
13. Individual consultations – the proposal recommendations
14-15. In-class presentation of the students’ research proposals and progress
15. Individual consultations
Course coordinators
Type of course
obligatory courses
Learning outcomes
Upon completing this course, students will learn the following:
Knowledge
- are aware of special requirements given to academic works;
- know that there are certain procedures and norms that guide the process of academic research;
- know differences between academic and non-academic texts, sources, language;
- understand the issue of academic honesty and others’ intellectual property,
- are aware of the most important facts the US immigration and cities
Understand the basic concepts of immigration and urban studies
Skills:
- are able to organize a basic research process leading to write a BA thesis;
- have skills necessary to find and evaluate primary and secondary sources;
- are able to construct a coherent and logical argument;
- can document sources in an academic way (in the Chicago Style) and avoid plagiarism;
- can present the results of their research in an academic way (written and oral);
- knows basic rules of editing a thesis in English.
Competences:
- can organize their research process;
- can present the aims and results of their research publicly
- are aware of the possible consequences of plagiarism;
- can give meaningful feedback to others in a respectful way
Assessment criteria
Active participation and in-class/homework assignments 20%
Annotated bibliography 25%
Research proposal 35%
In-class presentation 20%
Bibliography
1. Jane the Virgin, TV series (Netflix), fragments
2. Juan Piñón, Jane the Virgin. Harvard Review of Latin America, https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/jane-the-virgin/
3. Julia Foulkes, The Ground Beneath the West Side Story, https://www.lincolncenter.org/feature/legacies-of-san-juan-hill/the-ground-beneath-lessemgreaterwest-side-storylessemgreater
3. Earl Babbie, The Practice of Social Research, fragments
4. Umberto Eco, How to Write an MA Thesis, fragments