Paper Proposal

Context: You are a world humanities scholar interested in applying to an academic conference. Academic conferences are meetings where scholars gather to share new ideas. Scholars are typically split into groups of three or four people and take turns reading their new research to a small audience of interested scholars.

Before you can present at a conference, however, you must be accepted to speak. To be accepted, you typically write a brief proposal (~250 words) explaining the particular research problem you want to explore and why that problem is important enough to give you a speaking spot at the conference. Proposals are typically written in response to a “call for papers” (CFP), which the conference planning committee distributes.

Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is to introduce you to an important genre of academic writing (the conference proposal) and give you confidence writing large assignments by starting with a small, manageable introduction. Proposals are used in non-academic conferences as well. Finally this assignment is designed to help you clarify your research problem.

Advice: While successful conference proposals have some differences, most contain a sentence or two answering the following points:

1) big picture problem or topic widely debated in your field.

2) gap in the literature on this topic.

3) your project filling the gap.

4) the specific material that you examine in the paper.

5) your original argument.

6) a strong concluding sentence.[1]

Find several peer reviewed journal articles to get an idea of the important problems being debated in world humanities scholarship today

Pre-work: Find a CFP that might accept a paper on world humanities defined very loosely. Topics could include art, literature, internationalism, English, colonialism, etc…

Add the url for the CFP to your google portfolio then pick three goals from the proposal goal bank and update your google portfolio with a brief statement explaining how you will accomplish your goal.

Due one week before the proposal

Task: Respond to the CFP in less than 250 words (unless the CFP has a different word limit).

Post-work: Update your google portfolio with a brief reflective statement detailing how well you feel addressed your goals and how you can improve in future assignments.

Due one week after the proposal

Length: 250 words (excluding biographical statement)
Format: Upload to your google doc

[1] Kelsky, Karen. “How To(sday): How to write a Paper or Conference Proposal Abstract.” Theprofessorisin.com. https://theprofessorisin.com/2011/07/12/how-tosday-how-to-write-a-paper-abstract/. Accessed February 21, 2019.