world music research paper
you will need to submit a 7- to 8-page research paper over a world music topic of interest to you. You may choose any topic you like, with the exception of the music that you listen to on a daily basis (for most of you that will mean American pop music; for others it will mean the commercial music of your country of origin). The rationale behind this assignment is to have you broaden your horizons by becoming better acquainted with the unfamiliar.
Your paper will need to include the usual components of a formal paper worth
30% of your grade in a 3-hour course: a thesis paragraph that lays out your intent in clear terms, ample documentation of your research using an accepted citation style of your choosing (Turabian, APA, etc.), a works cited list, and 7-8 pages of well-written prose in which the usual grammatical, syntactical and stylistic conventions that apply to serious writing are assiduously observed.
You should count on consulting at least five scholarly sources (encyclopedia
entries, journal articles, monographs, etc.) in the course of your research. If you
plan to use online sources, make sure they are scholarly
– Wikipedia does not
count, nor do web pages constructed by travel agencies, etc.