Home - PHIL 4050 - Senior Thesis Seminar (FALL 2023)

About this guide

Welcome!

This guide includes useful resources to support the research and writing process
for your senior thesis in philosophy. In this guide you'll find the following:

Reference sources to find background information on your topic
Catalogs and e-book collections to search for books in print and online
Databases for locating scholarly journal articles and suggestions for finding appropriate databases for your topic in CLIO
Research tips to help you with refining or expanding your research focus and organizing materials for writing once you find them
Information and reference material about correct use of formatting styles and citation management

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

Choosing A Topic

Figuring out what you want to write about is often the hardest part of your work. Ideas may come from anywhere and we have to be open to where are reading and thinking might take us. There is no right way to tackle this part of the process, it can look different for everyone. Here are some suggestions as you begin the process:

Is there a class reading that you've found interesting? Are there concepts, ideas, or themes you've always found intriguing? These can be great starting points. It's important to know that it's very normal for your topic to change a bit as you conduct your research, so it's important to be flexible.
Start thinking about the question you'd like to ask or explore and as you do this and try to generate important words or phrases related to your topic, but be flexible. Create a list of different keywords and phrases you can use to begin your research. If visualizing helps, you write them down on paper, or use a concept map to organize your thoughts. Try out different combinations of the key terms you've developed
Use your key terms to search your topic across databases. Use general academic and subject area specific databases and be sure to try out different combinations of your search terms.
Begin familiarizing yourself with background information about the topic. Reference materials are especially helpful for providing context for your topic.

Generating Search Terms

Developing keywords, or search terms, is a good first step to starting your research.

The purpose of this is to develop a language for describing your topic. We have to figure out how best to talk about our topic in order to do fruitful searches in the library catalog, databases, and on the Internet.

The process of developing keywords can be as simple as generating a list of synonyms, but you may also find yourself thinking about related topics, themes, people, or events to create a list of words that you can then combine them to try to find what you are looking for.

Once you generate your search terms, you can use then interchangeably across platforms.

You can also use Library of Congress subject headings that are assigned to books, journals, and other published materials to find helpful search terms.

Keyword Concept Map
Use this to map out your topic concepts and generate related keywords for searching CLIO & library databases.

Searching with Boolean Modifiers

Boolean Modifiers can further expand, refine, and improve a search. Boolean modifiers include the asterisk, * (also known as truncation/wildcard searching), (parentheses), and "quotation marks".

An asterisk, *, add to the "stem" of a word and searches for any word includes that stem, or the letters before the asterisk. Therefore, you will get results with different endings but all the same stem. See the following example:
- Searching for stat* will return results with the following words:
  - state, states, statute, statutory, statistic, statistics, stats, statistical, and more!
Parentheses, (), are used to contain OR statements. If you want results that return one word out of a group of two or more, you put them between parentheses to ensure that only one of the search terms is returned: (elderly OR aged OR senior citizen).
Quotation marks, "", return exactly what you typed inside the quotation marks. Therefore if you search for "state" you will only get results containing the word "state" (even the plural of 'state will not be included in your search results!).

*borrowed from University of Illinois Library's Advanced Library Search Strategies Libguide (https://guides.library.illinois.edu/c.php?g=563215&p=3877584).

Combining them all...
Examples using combinations of the three operators:
puritans AND women AND (massachusetts OR connecticut OR "rhode island" OR "new hampshire")
(adolescen* OR teen*) AND (cigarettes OR smok*)
reagan AND "star wars" NOT (movie OR film OR cinema OR "motion picture")
"zora neale hurston" AND (correspondence OR letter* OR diar* OR autobiograph* OR memoir*)

These guides are a good place to start when thinking about research and writing.

Writing Philosophy by Lewis Vaughn
Call Number: B52.7 .V38 2018
ISBN: 9780190853013
Publication Date: 2018-01-22
Writing Philosophy: A Student's Guide to Reading and Writing Philosophy Essays, Second Edition, is a concise, self-guided manual that covers how to read philosophy and the basics of argumentative essay writing. It encourages students to master fundamental skills quickly--with minimal instructor input--and provides step-by-step instructions for each phase of the writing process, from formulating a thesis, to creating an outline, to writing a final draft, supplementing this tutorial approach with model essays, outlines, introductions, and conclusions. Writing Philosophy is just $5 when packaged with any Oxford University Press Philosophy text. Contact your Oxford representative for details and package ISBNs.
The Craft of Research, Fourth Edition by Wayne C. Booth; Gregory G. Colomb; Joseph M. Williams; Joseph Bizup; William T. FitzGerald
Call Number: Q180.55.M4 B66 2016
ISBN: 9780226239569
Publication Date: 2016-10-19
With more than three-quarters of a million copies sold since its first publication, The Craft of Research has helped generations of researchers at every level--from first-year undergraduates to advanced graduate students to research reporters in business and government--learn how to conduct effective and meaningful research. Conceived by seasoned researchers and educators Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams, this fundamental work explains how to find and evaluate sources, anticipate and respond to reader reservations, and integrate these pieces into an argument that stands up to reader critique. The fourth edition has been thoroughly but respectfully revised by Joseph Bizup and William T. FitzGerald. It retains the original five-part structure, as well as the sound advice of earlier editions, but reflects the way research and writing are taught and practiced today. Its chapters on finding and engaging sources now incorporate recent developments in library and Internet research, emphasizing new techniques made possible by online databases and search engines. Bizup and FitzGerald provide fresh examples and standardized terminology to clarify concepts like argument, warrant, and problem. Following the same guiding principle as earlier editions--that the skills of doing and reporting research are not just for elite students but for everyone--this new edition retains the accessible voice and direct approach that have made The Craft of Research a leader in the field of research reference. With updated examples and information on evaluation and using contemporary sources, this beloved classic is ready for the next generation of researchers.
Woe Is I by Patricia T. O'Conner
Call Number: PN145 .D74 2019
ISBN: 9780525533054
Publication Date: 2019-02-05
A revised and updated edition of the iconic grammar guide for the 21st century. In this expanded and updated edition of Woe Is I, former editor at The New York Times Book Review Patricia T. O'Conner unties the knottiest grammar tangles with the same insight and humor that have charmed and enlightened readers of previous editions for years. With fresh insights into the rights, wrongs, and maybes of English grammar and usage, O'Conner offers in Woe Is I down-to-earth explanations and plain-English solutions to the language mysteries that bedevil all of us. "Books about English grammar and usage are... never content with the status quo," O'Conner writes. "That's because English is not a stay-put language. It's always changing--expanding here, shrinking there, trying on new things, casting off old ones... Time doesn't stand still and neither does language." In this fourth edition, O'Conner explains how the usage of an array of words has evolved. For example, the once-shunned "they," "them," and "their" for an unknown somebody is now acceptable. And the battle between "who" and "whom" has just about been won, O'Conner says (hint- It wasn't by "whom"). Then there's the use of "taller than me" in simple comparisons, instead of the ramrod-stiff "taller than I." "May" and "might," "use to" and "used to," abbreviations that use periods and those that don't, and the evolving definition of "unique" are all explained here by O'Conner. The result is an engaging, up-to-date and jargon-free guide to every reader's questions about grammar, style, and usage for the 21st century.

PHIL 4050 - Senior Thesis Seminar (FALL 2023)