OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this project is to allow you to demonstrate your ability to investigate on your own some topic in (or related to) the American Musical Theater.

GENERAL METHOD: In broad outline, you will:

1. define a topic according to the limitations set below,
2. accumulate a bibliography of relevant items,
3. read, assimilate, and evaluate the information from the items in your bibliography,
4. complete a preliminary draft, outline or conference related to the final project,
5. give an informal oral presentation of your work [NB. A separately graded assignment. See those instructions on the web site.]
6. write a formal paper based on your readings and research.

LIMITS: Your topic must deal with some issue that is related to the American Musical Theater. Specifically, it must be more than a simple description of a single show (or even group of shows) or just a basic biography of a person connected with the theater. Rather, your paper must address and confront some "problem" related to the American Musical Theater in such a way that demonstrates an understanding of the chosen issue and its complexities. Suitable topics might address such issues as the nature of a particular work in relation to other shows or generic conventions; the evolution of the style of a composer, lyricist, producer or team; the impact of commericial and economic forces on musical theater; the critical reception of a show or the collected works of an individual or team; a close "reading" of a particular work, etc. You need not "solve" the problem in your topic, but you should explain the conflicting issues and how they might be interpreted. NB. Topics may not cover subjects discussed substantially in seminar meetings.

PROPOSAL AND APPROVAL OF THE TOPIC: Your topic must be approved by me, and you may therefore want to communicate with me before you prepare your proposal. The proposal will specify (1) what you intend to study, (2) how you intend to limit your topic, and (3) any questions you expect to address in your paper. The typed proposal should be at least a half page in length, but no more than a full page (about 150-300 words), submitted as a separate WORD document. (Do NOT simply type your proposal into the body of an email.) The proposal is due by 5:00 pm on Friday, 26 January 2018 and counts for 5% of the project grade. Any proposal that does not show genuine effort toward defining a suitable topic will be returned for revision and the grade reduced by 50% per day, i.e., you have two days in which to resubmit an acceptable proposal before losing all points for the proposal. If you fail to submit a satisfactory proposal within those two days, similar reductions will continue against the rest of the project’s value. Grading of the proposal will be based primarily on the coherence and viability of the proposal as a research topic, i.e., how well have you defined the parameters of what you intend to investigate, and how feasible is that topic for an advanced graduate-level paper in the time allotted.

RESEARCH & BIBLIOGRAPHY: After your topic has been approved, you should begin to assemble a suitable bibliography on that topic, using the skills, techniques, and resources mastered in MUH 6916. Remember to expand your search to the items beyond those on hand at UCF, but do be aware of the time limitations for acquiring ILL items.

As a record of your research and a way for me to suggest additional items, (1) you should keep a journal of your research work (either a separate hand-written document or as an informal WORD document), and (2) you must prepare a bibliography with a single overview essay that describes the entire collection of items, the authors cited, the relative values of items, etc. Use the journal to keep track of your work, noting all bibliographic searches that you make. Journal entries should list the specific terms that you searched, how you searched (e.g., subject, title, author, keyword, etc.), and where (which collections and databases) you searched. Be sure also to include unsuccessful searches, in order to save yourself the trouble of retracing your steps later.

Your bibliography will be an alphabetical list of at least twenty (20) quality items that relate to your topic. Each item must be listed in a proper bibliographic format (author, title, publication information, etc.), using Chicago Style. In addition to the bibliographic entries, you must include a brief essay that describes the general nature of the bibliography available for your topic. In short, do not annotate each item, but rather, give an overview of the major resources, authors, etc., that appear to be most useful to your work.

Finally, you are not required to use all of these bibliography items in your paper, and you may later decide to add more items to your bibliography and to drop others from it. The purpose of this stage of the research is to demonstrate that you have begun to accumulate and evaluate the literature on your subject.

The bibliography and its accompanying essay is due by 5:00 pm on Friday, 23 February 2018. The bibliography counts for 20% of the project grade. Grading of the annotated bibliography will be split 50/50 between (1) the bibliography itself, i.e., the correctness of the bibliographic format, spelling, punctuation, etc., and (2) the relevance of the citations to your work, as demonstrated by the accompanying essay.

OUTLINE / DRAFT / CONFERENCE: Before you present any final version of your paper, you will complete some sort of graded prelimnary task. You have three options:

• OUTLINE OF THE PAPER: This document will be a substantially developed plan of the paper that you intend to write. Any outline that does not go beyond the first level of subdivision (I.A.) will receive a maximum grade of "65". (mid "D") A better outline will include significant (Arabic Numerals: 1, 2, 3) and even minor (Arabic Lower case: a, b, c) subdivisions as necessary, e.g., I.A.1.a.(1)--etc..
• CONFERENCE ABOUT THE PAPER: At some after submitting your bibliography, you will have a minimum 30-minute one-on-one conference with me about your paper. The focus of that conference will be to ensure that your work is proceeding on schedule toward a satisfactory conclusion. The conference itself may focus on issues of organization, e.g., a proposed outline or an early draft of the paper, but you may also discuss other facets of the project, ranging from additional research you might need, through how you might use specific sources or reconcile conflicting information, up to questions of how to format the final document. You must schedule this conference with me at least 24 hours in advance, i.e., you may not simply "drop in" for this graded activity, and you must be prepared to discuss some significant aspect of the project. Grading of the conference will be based on how far you have progressed with the project and how well you have prepared for the meeting, i.e., the longer you have waited for the conference, the closer you should be to the end of the project. NB. You are welcome to speak with me as often as you wish at any mutually convenient time about this paper, but remember that the "conference" is a formal, graded meeting, which must be identifed as such in advance.
• DRAFT OF THE PAPER: This document will be a substantially completed preliminary version of the paper that you intend to write. It will have a clearly enunciated thesis, some supporting points, and a conclusion. Incomplete drafts, i.e., papers without a closing, will receive a grade of "D" (65) or lower. This document should also be formatted in a relatively clean fashion, i.e., it has been spell-checked and/or proofread so that most obvious writing errors are absent, and most of the bibliographic apparatus (footnotes or endnotes) are in place. My reading and grading of the draft will be based on how well the draft has progressed toward a satisfactory final version. At this stage, I will NOT act as a spell-checker/proofreader for simple or obvious errors. Rather, the focus of my reading will be on the strength and logic of the argument, and how well it is supported by the evidence you supply.

This stage of your work (outline, draft, or conference) must be completed or submitted by 5:00 pm on Friday, 30 March 2018. This activity counts for 25% of the project grade.

THE FINAL DOCUMENT: This paper must:

• be produced electronically as if it were typed on 8-½” x 11” white paper, with 1” margins on all sides, except for the first page of text, which has a 2” top margin.
• use a 12-point typeface, be typed in double-space, and have the first lines of all paragraphs indented.
• must footnote all direct citations, paraphrases and other appropriations of ideas from other sources. Citations may be given as either footnotes or endnotes, but in all cases must give complete citations to the exact source of any borrowed or referenced materials. (Do NOT use in-line citations).)
• be at least 2,500 words (about 10-12 pages) in length. NB. This absolute minimum length for the paper does not include the title page, bibliography and notes. You may write more with no concern for penalties. (“Word Count” under “Tools” in most word-processor programs gives this information, if you are not certain of the length of your paper.)
• include a final bibliography (formatted in Chicago Style) of the items actually used (and which may differ from the earlier bibliography) after the last page of text.
• include a title page that gives your name, the title of your paper/topic, my name, course number & title, and date.
• be submitted as a single WORD document. Under no circumstances are you to separate elements of the paper into two or more files. Final papers that are submitted in two or more files will receive an automatic 1-grade deduction for each addiitional file beyond the first.

The final draft of the paper is due electronically as an attachment to an email sent to me by 5:00 pm on Monday, 30 April 2018. The final paper itself counts for 50% of the project grade, with the value split equally between writing and content.

Electronic submission of any part of this assignment--proposal, bibliography, or paper--by means of email attachment is expected.

• Proposal: due: by 5:00 pm on Friday, 26 January 2018 (5% of the project grade)
• Bibliography w/ Essay: due by 5:00 pm on Friday, 23 February 2018 (20% of the project grade)
• Outline / Draft / Conference: submitted or completed by 5:00 pm on Friday, 30 March 2018 (25% of the project grade)
• Final Paper: due by 5:00 pm on Monday, 30 April 2018 (50% of the project grade)