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
Type of course
obligatory courses
Course coordinators
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
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: