SOC 410: Senior Seminar in Sociology:
Social Problems in Global-Historical Perspective
WED 12:30-3:20 pm, Asbury 204
 DePauw University
 SPRING 2009
Professor Thomas Hall
 Office: 106 Asbury, x4519, email: thall@depauw.edu
 OFFICE HOURS:  TuTr 11-12, 2:30-4, & by appt.
Draft Body of Thesis
Last Updated 3-16-09
 Due by 5 pm the Monday before your presentation, or sooner!

For this assignment you should have a "readable" draft of the analysis, conclusions, ameliorations sections of your thesis.  See the outline in What is A Thesis for general guidelines.

By "readable" draft I mean that the writing should be relatively clean, you should have as many in-text references, endnotes, and bibliography in final form as you can. HOWEVER, you may leave sections blank.  Or you may have notes like:  "Need to write a section on xxxx here"; or "I am stuck with this part"; or "Is this interpretation reasonable?", etc.  That is you may ask questions directed at me. This writing will be LONGER than what you can read in your presentation, but it will help me listen more closely and help you organize your presentation. Your presentation will be an abbreviated form of this. See How to present your thesis to the seminar.

WHY?  There are several reasons, or goals, for this exercise:

  1. It keeps you moving and writing

  2. It gives you some text from which to draw your presentation.

  3. It helps me listen more carefully to your presentation. 

  4. It will help me to help you better as you move into the final version of your thesis.

  5. It will set you up to make maximal use of the critiques from your presentation.

  6. It will put you in a position to have considerable time for perfecting the final draft of your thesis..

This, and the Draft Intro assignment are direct suggestions from past seminar students. They felt that with the pressures to get things done for other classes, it was too easy to let work on the thesis slide, and then be very jammed up at the end of the term. This will help you to avoid this situation, and set up to sail readily into a final draft.

REMEMBER, that this assignment, like the proposal, the annotated bibliography, is a step toward the final product, it is not the final product.

Send comments or questions to thall@depauw.edu
Back to Course Home Page