Research Paper (due Thursday, Dec. 18, 10:00pm).

Your paper for this course will give you an opportunity to take some of the ideas that we will be talking about in class and explore them in greater depth. My only requirements are that you consider connections between landscape and art in Asia. You might choose to focus on a specific work of art, a specific genre of landscape paintings or gardens, or the similarities/differences of approaches to landscapes and gardens in China/Japan, Asia/Europe, etc. I encourage you to talk to me about possible paper topics. Note that you should turn in a proposal for your topic on Wednesday, Oct. 8; this should be no longer than one paragraph, and the point of turning it in is so that I can make sure that you are choosing a manageable topic.

For the research stage of the project, I suggest that you consult Oxford Art Online, the Art Index, the Bibliography of Asian Studies Online, and JSTOR (online databases on the Library's web page, http://academic.hws.edu/library/ under "Databases"). Note: for all of these online resources, you must be connected to the HWS campus network. Don't overlook the books on reserve for our course at the Library (not only their contents but also their bibliographies). I plan to go over how to find resources on Chinese and Japanese landscape paintings and gardens in class on Friday, Sept. 19.

If you need to search for proper Chinese names, you should know that there are two romanization systems in common use, Wade-Giles and Hanyu Pinyin, as well as a third for place names, and this means that you should search using multiple systems (Soochow, Su-chou, and Suzhou are all possible romanizations of the city in Jiangsu province famed for its gardens). Please refer to the conversion sheet attached to your syllabus, or ask me for help.

On Wednesday, Nov. 5, you should turn in an annotated bibliography of your sources, with printouts of online search results for material in the library catalog or databases. The annotated bibliography should be a list of the sources found by this date that you plan to use in your paper, with a sentence or two explaining why it is useful in your research. (Of course, it is fine to continue to look for sources after the annotated bibliography is due.) It is particularly important that you pay attention to your sources. Although looking for information on the internet is very convenient, internet sources are not always subject to peer review in the same way as books and journal articles. For this reason, I expect the majority of your bibliography to consist of peer-reviewed books and journal articles. Although I cannot stipulate how many sources I expect to see, certainly the more you have and the more academic they are the better: part of the point of doing a research paper is to demonstrate the amount and quality of research you did, and this is done through your bibliography.

The paper should be about 3000-4500 words (roughly 10-15 pages).

Develop a thesis or an argument around which to organize your writing. (Note: this should not be a vague, inflated claim such as "This painting exemplifies the beauty and grandeur of Chinese art.") Pay attention to your language: please avoid judgmental words like "good" or "bad," as well as overused adjectives like "nice" and "interesting."

Be sure, in addition to including a bibliography at the end of your paper, to cite your sources throughout your paper using either footnotes (preferred in humanities courses) or parenthetical references: see A Pocket Style Manual for details on how to do this. Note that bibliographic and note forms are different.

Please refer to the notes in your syllabus about appropriate formats for written work, grading, and plagiarism. If you need more information about how to write an art history paper, I recommend looking at Sylvan Barnet's A Short Guide to Writing about Art. (The 1985 edition is in the reference section of the Library; the 2008 edition is available for sale in the College Store as a recommended text for this class.) If you have further questions about writing research papers, you might visit the HWS Writes website.