Literary and Cultural Studies:Writing academic texts
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Contents
How do I find a good topic?
A good piece of academic work challenges existing views. There is more than one way do do this. You can attack general notions, you can offer insight into a subject matter that has never been dealt with and hint at blind spots in existing research, you can question existing debates by opening new ones... these are of course thoughts for a dissertation rather than a 15 page seminar essay, yet they give an idea of the direction you are supposed to take during your studies.
- Why is it important to ask this particular question? Why is it fruitful to enlarge the scientific debate with these particular answers? How will these questions/answers change the debate?
- How can the question be answered? What aspects have to be analysed in order to answer this question?
- Which results will influence a positive, which a negative conclusion?
- During the writing process the question needs to be asked how far every paragraph/chapter approaches/approximates the central problem, i.e. leads to a solution.
- The conclusion should connect the results with the answer/solution to the question/problem.
- Which alternative options are possible? What would be the result if the analysis of the problem showed a different possibility?
