HONR 230 Honors Humanities

When developing your topic or research question, ask yourself: 

• Is there enough available information on my topic? Do some exploratory searching first, using the internet and a few relevant databases.
• What am I truly interested in? What do I really want to learn about?
• Who else will be interested in this research? The topic should be of interest not only to you but to others, too.
• Is the scope so broad I will lose direction? If so, how can I narrow it down? 

In the early stages, you may find it helpful to write your topic as a title and include a brief description and how it could be developed, to define your ideas and plot a course of action. Although your research topic or aspects of it may change, it's still useful to record your thoughts in the form of a 'log,' to remind yourself of how the topic has evolved and to help you avoid retracing your steps.

While thinking about research topics:

• let your previous work or experience guide you
• browse the literature, especially journals in your field, and read, read, read!
• discuss ideas with your professor or librarian --  they can help you decide on an appropriate topic
• keep in mind that topics are not fully formed at the start but take shape as you research them.  Your topic may change as you learn more--that's OK!

Spend a few minutes learning more about your topic before you dive in gathering books and articles.  As you learn more about your topic, you'll discover its more complex than you may have guessed!  

Credo Reference (link below) provides more than 3.5 million encyclopedia articles to learn about your topic.  These are useful for understanding the following:

• Background and scope of your topic
• Definitions of specialized terms and vocabulary that will be used by the experts in the field
• Related topics that may help impact your topic ideas
• Bibliographies are often available for longer articles to identify key books and articles on the topic
• Variety of resources let you envision your topic through different "lenses."  For example, do you want to research food insecurity from an economic point of view, an historical point of view, an educational point of view, a psychological point of view, etc?

TIPS: As you read these articles make sure you are capturing important terms and phrases, timelines of events, and important people who are mentioned.  Take special note of areas where there are diverging opinions--these can be treasure troves for research!

Opposing Viewpoints in Context (link below) provides information on current events. 

The list of topics can be helpful to browse  to spark your own ideas.  Each "viewpoint" or "issue" has articles, opinion/viewpoint essays, and sometimes books and websites.