Briefing.
Word count: 2400 – 2600
Research Essay
The essay provides the groundwork for your dissertation in terms of familiarising yourselves with the sources, theories, potential case studies and visuals of a chosen subject area.
At this stage we do not want you to commit yourself to a research question, but we want you to investigate the subject area from which the research question will be drawn.
Ideally, your topic will draw broadly on one of the areas discussed over the last two years in text work. These have covered a range of histories and theories which give a great deal of scope. Nonetheless it is important that you are sufficiently motivated by and interested in your topic so please talk to us if there is something in particular you want to investigate where you are not sure if it is acceptable.
The topic should relate to design and/or visual history/theory/practice/culture. The emphasis should be on a critical investigation rather than describing a phenomenon or a telling a story.
Everything that you have learnt about essay writing so far should be applied to this work.
What you have to do:
1. Select and describe a subject area and its historical and locational scope. (50 words or so)
2. Identify a range of sources on that subject area. (These should be in a list form as a bibliography and do not count towards the word count)
3. Write an overview of that topic and its literature, in which you discuss some of the questions and themes that you are interested in and evaluate the sources. (see “how to write a literature review.”) (approx 1500 words)
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4. Suggest an argued case that you might make, and how you would structure the argument.(approx. 700 words)
I’m going to attach my started attempt, with my introduction and my bibliography of sources I want to use in roughly the order I wanted to structure it, I’m after this essay to be finished off for me so I can focus on my other work for my hand-in, all help is appreciated.