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 music, career, or life of Richard Strauss.
GENERAL METHOD: In broad outline, you will:
LIMITS: Your topic must deal with some issue that is related to Richard Strauss. Specifically, it must be more than a simple description of his life (or some events within it) or just a "program note" decription of some of his music. Rather, your paper must address and confront some "problem" related to Strauss, his music, or his career, in such a way that demonstrates an understanding of the chosen issue and its complexities. Suitable topics might address such issues as the "formal" structure of a work, the programmatic interpretation of a tone poem, the perception of Strauss as a Nazi, his interest in composer's rights, etc. You need not "solve" the problem in your paper/presentatoin, but you should explain the conflicting issues and how they might be interpreted.
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). The proposal is due by 5:00 pm on Friday, 24 January 2020 and counts for 10% 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/list 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 collecction 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, 21 February 2020. The bibliography counts for 20% of the project grade. Grading of the annotated bibliography will be split 25/25/50 between (1) the correctness of the citations themselves, i.e., proper bibliographic format, spelling, punctuation, etc., (2) relevance of the citations to your work, and (3) the clarity and quality of the brief essay describing the bibliography and why these particular items are included in it.
FORMAL PRESENTATION: During either of the the final seminar meetings (Tuesdays, 14 and 21 April 2020), you will give a brief (approximately 20-25 minutes) presentation on the basic issue of your topic.
See the instructions for the Formal Presentiaon for detailed instrucitons and grading criteria.
THE FINAL DOCUMENT: This paper must:
The final draft of the paper is due electronically as an attachment an email sent to me by 5:00 pm on Friday, 24 April 2020. The final paper itself counts for 60% 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.