FYWB 1115: First-Year Writing, Modernity (Lynn)

Welcome! This page supports research for First-Year Writing, Modernity

If you need assistance identifying additional resources, search terms or strategies, please schedule a research consultation with your personal librarian. 

Professor: Andrew Lynn

General Research Help

Choosing a topic

Choosing a topic often feels like an impossible first step, so it is best to keep your topic ideas broad, and then begin honing in on your research question as you encounter research materials. There is no correct way to do research, but the following guidelines might be useful to keep in mind as you begin:

• Pick a text that interests you and a theme or idea that you want write about
• Come up with a preliminary question, but keep it loose
• Brainstorm some keywords to help you begin your research

Finding Background Information

• Use web resources like Wikipedia and Google searches to brainstorm and identify additional keywords for your topic
• For authoritative reference resources (like scholarly encyclopedias) see the Finding Background Material tab here. These resources:
  • Are written by scholars in their fields, so you can trust the information they provide
  • Give you an overview of your topic,  background information, and help define terms you aren't familiar with
  • Contain bibliographies to help you find more information related to your topic
  • Can help you find more keywords, phrases, people and ideas to further your research
     

Refining Your Topic

After gathering your background information, refine your initial topic and question based off of what you learned. A good rule of thumb: if there is an entire book on your topic, it is too broad for a research paper. On the other hand, if the topic can be discussed in a few paragraphs, then it is too narrow.

Example: "The role of women in the plays of Shakespeare" is too broad because hundreds of books and articles have been written on this topic; "The symbolism of Ariel's costume in the Tempest" is likely too narrow because there are not enough books and articles discussing this specific detail.

Remember, don't worry if refining your topic happens more than once!

Why use keywords?

Keywords are terms that describe the topic you are researching. Keywords can be a people, places, things, ideas, or concepts. We need keywords to effectively search in library academic databases (like CLIO or Jstor). Unlike internet browsers, which have developed to understand full questions written in natural language, academic databases use keywords to locate resources. 

There are no perfect searches when using keywords, which is why it's useful to brainstorm lots of related terms and/or synonyms to locate what you are looking for. For example, we might use the word "teenager" to describe a particular population, but the term "youth" might be used in a database instead.  You can also find new keywords once you begin searching in the content section and subject sections of a catalog entry.