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Proposal Revisions
Posted on April 12th, 2014 No commentsThis past week, I received a lot of great advice on how to improve my proposal from Dr. Jones and Amanda. It was really interesting to see where their suggestions did or did not overlap. I am looking forward to delving into how to really improve my proposal after meeting with my committee soon.
Dr. Jones suggested that I work on being less vague with some of my ideas and gave me advice on how to make my ideas more concrete. She also advised me to “tell a story” more and how to improve the way I look the sources in my literature review section. We also discussed the idea the idea of narrowing this topic down more—something neither of us are sure how to do. We are both hopeful that a meeting with my committee might yield some ideas!
My next step will be to meet with my committee to discuss this proposal and ways to improve upon it. I am then going to take their suggestions, along with those from Dr. Jones and Amanda, and thoroughly revise my paper, focusing on clarity, content, concreteness, and general errors/word structure. In order really focus on clarity, I will have some friends and family members who are educated, but not historians, read over my ideas and see what makes sense to them. I will also continue to work on planning out my research process for this summer, trying to get a better idea of exactly which collections at which institutions I should visit. I have found quite a number of prescriptive beauty texts from the 40s and 50s and ordered many from ILL, so I think being able to read through some of these will be a good step, as well.
4 responses to “Proposal Revisions”
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collodionista April 14th, 2014 at 13:41
I think getting non-historians to read over history papers is a great idea. My mom has been one of my editors for years. Getting someone who is not as intimately connected to your paper’s subject matter can be a great way to test your paper’s clarity and your argument’s effectiveness, as you know. Sounds like you are on the right track with your revisions. Keep up the good work!
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mslilly81 April 14th, 2014 at 14:29
Sounds fabulous! I also appreciate the feedback you gave me and taking the time to read my proposal! Your topic is extremely interesting, and I also think it’s important for modern historians, too. I look at your work being significant for understanding how women are influenced by the media and what beauty means during a certain time period. I think no matter what direction you take or narrow your focus, your thesis is going to be great to read!
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tayloringradschool April 14th, 2014 at 14:43
In terms of making your project less vague, it could be helpful to think of what exactly you mean by certain words and phrases. Even if it’s not necessarily important for you to define them within your project, if you made of list of what exactly you consider aspects of beauty (or if you disagree with another historian) so then you can respond to those specifically. I hope this makes sense, and if you’ve already done this, sorry for the overlap! But I think it’s coming along great 🙂
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KJ April 13th, 2014 at 14:04