Committee on Degrees
in History & Literature
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Harvard University
A Guide to Writing
a Senior Thesis
in History & Literature
H
&
L
A Guide to Writing
a Senior Thesis
in History & Literature
Cover photo credit: Harvard Public Aairs and Communications
Written by Andrew J. Romig, Copyright 2017, President and Fellows of Harvard College
Table of Contents
Introduction: The History & Literature Senior Thesis .............1
Rules of the Game..............................................................................2
What’s Inside ......................................................................................3
Acknowledgments ..............................................................................3
Insert: Your Relationship with Your Advisor ............................4
Chapter One: Developing the Project ....................................... 6
Organizing Your Time .........................................................................6
From “Topics” to the Basic Building Blocks of Research .....................7
Storming the Brain .............................................................................8
Brainstorming Exercises ......................................................................8
Supplementing Your Brainstorms: “Pre-research” .................................9
Chapter One Recap .........................................................................10
Chapter Two: Writing the Proposal .........................................11
The Thesis Proposal Assignment ........................................................ 11
Finding Your Research Question ....................................................... 12
Resigning Yourself to Hard (but Ultimately Best) Choices ................. 13
Framing Your Question and Writing the Proposal Document ............14
Try Not to Argue: Let Your Sources Speak for Themselves .................14
Is There Any “Give” in the System? ...................................................15
Rewriting Your Proposal ...................................................................15
Chapter Two Recap ..........................................................................16
Chapter Three: Researching and Writing
the Rough Draft ...........................................................................17
Being an Active Researcher ...............................................................17
Making a Plan: Thinking about Draft “Chapters” ............................... 18
Taking Notes and Writing Daily .......................................................18
Assembling the Rough Draft ............................................................20
Thinking about Audience .................................................................21
Citing Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism ............................................22
Submitting a Draft Chapter for Concentration Review .....................22
Augmenting Your Research Plan .......................................................23
Chapter Three Recap........................................................................24
Chapter Four: Revising, the Final Frontier .............................25
Developing a Productive Critical Eye: Thinking in
Relative Terms about Precision, Clarity, and Persuasiveness ................25
Working the Thesis Statement ........................................................... 26
Finding the Best Structure for Your Ideas: Tell a Good Story ..............27
Critiquing Evidence .........................................................................27
More about Content ......................................................................... 28
20,000+ Words? Should You Do It? ................................................... 29
Chapter Four Recap .........................................................................29
Chapter Five: Finishing the Job ................................................30
Proofreading .....................................................................................30
Submitting the Final Copies..............................................................30
Celebrating the Process and Achieving Closure .................................31
Appendix A: Funding Your Research .......................................32
Appendix B: Sample Documents .............................................33
Sample title page ...............................................................................34
Sample word count page ................................................................... 35
Sample grant proposal A ....................................................................36
Sample grant proposal B ...................................................................38
Sample thesis proposal A ...................................................................40
Sample thesis proposal B ...................................................................41
Appendix C: Staying Healthy .................................................... 42
Bureau of Study Counsel Writing Groups .........................................42
UHS Resources ................................................................................42
Insert: Good Habits to Develop Early/Bad Habits
to Break Right Away ...................................................................44
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 1
introduction
The History & Literature
Senior Thesis
Believe it or not, the most dicult part of any extended research project is where you
are right now: the beginning. It’s dicult not just because it is all brand new to you (or
at least it seems that way), or because you have the whole beast in front of you (or, once
again, at least it seems that way). It’s dicult because you’ve been a student for a long
time now and you feel like you should know where to begin, but you’re not exactly sure
how to start, or with what.
By this time in your academic career, you’ve very likely heard that the rst thing
to do when faced with a large project is to break it down into smaller parts. This is
excellent advice. The problem, however, is that this kind of advice is rarely followed with
concrete ideas about how to break such a project down into its constituent pieces. In
this handbook, we’ll show you how. We’ll walk you through the Hist & Lit senior thesis
project step by step, showing you precisely where to begin, what to look out for along
the way, and how to nd the nish.
In trying to achieve this goal, we will attempt to walk a delicate line between clarity
and rigidity. We want to be crystal clear about the steps of the process. We want to teach
you all of the tricks of the trade. But we never want to suggest, even for a moment, that
there is one, single “Hist & Lit Way” to conduct a research project, one ideal form for a
Hist & Lit future that you must try to match.
This handbook is thus not a cookie-cutter template for the “perfect” thesis. It is a
gathering of helpful advice designed to help you write the best thesis you possibly can.
You will learn in the pages that follow that success in the Hist & Lit senior thesis project
depends far less on following a specic set of rules than on imagination and ecient
planning, mixed perhaps with a bit of elbow grease and a dash of rm perseverance. You
will also learn that Hist & Lit senior theses may take many forms. Hist & Lit students
have written amazingly creative projects over the years, and each reects the individual
ideas, interests, and views of its author. This is our ideal. We want your thesis to be your
own and no one else’s, something upon which you can gaze lovingly at the end of the
year as a job worthwhile and well-done.
You’ll notice early on that we break the thesis project down into essentially three
moments: project development, researching and drafting, and revising (writing the
proposal receives its own chapter, but it truly marks the end of the project development
stage). Ideally, we want you to spend approximately 33% of your time on each of these
moments. It is our experience that students typically invest far too much time on the
research and drafting stage and far too little time on developing the project correctly and
revising their work after its initial drafting. You will nd, therefore, that in this handbook
we place a great deal of emphasis on project development and revision.
page 2 | Introduction: The History & Literature Thesis
We recommend that you read this handbook from cover to cover. Then, once you are
familiar with its contents, you can refer back to it again (and again) along the way. Always
keep in mind that if, as you read along, one of the suggestions doesn’t sound useful to
you, it’s completely within your right not to follow it! (That’s right. It’s okay.) However,
we strongly encourage you to follow the sage advice contained within these pages. Why?
Because, quite simply, it works.
Rules of the Game
We have tried to build as much exibility as possible into the Hist & Lit senior thesis,
but there are a few rules about what it absolutely must be and what it absolutely cannot
be. Let’s get those out of the way right now.
• A senior thesis must be an original research project of no fewer than 10,000 words and no
more than 20,000 words, not counting notes and bibliography. Students may petition the
Director of Studies to write a thesis that exceeds 20,000 words. Typical theses run somewhere
in the range of 15,000–20,000 words.
• All candidates for an honors degree in History & Literature must prepare a senior thesis.
Students who do not complete a thesis are not eligible to graduate with honors in History &
Literature. Students who elect not to complete a thesis must rst secure the permission of the
Director of Studies to withdraw from candidacy for honors. To receive credit for History &
Literature 99, students may submit two twenty-page papers (one each semester) or one forty-
page paper (in early May). Alternately, students may take additional courses that count for
concentration credit to replace one or both semesters of History & Literature 99.
• History & Literature theses cannot be “creative writing” projects, except in the case of some
joint concentrators. We want you to be creative. All History & Literature theses should be
creative. But you can’t write ction. No novels or plays or books of poetry allowed.
• History & Literature theses cannot recycle papers from other History & Literature tutorials
or other classes. Each year, students ask whether they can build upon the work that they have
done, for example, in their junior tutorial essays. This is, of course, just ne; and you can even use
some of the material from said essays in your thesis if you must (it’s not necessary to reinvent the
wheel). However, your senior thesis should be a completely new project. If you wrote on William
Carlos Williams as a junior, it’s ne to write about him again as a senior. But you must ask a new
question and/or look at dierent texts — that is, you must forge a new path.
That’s it. Those are the rules. The rest of what follows is, once again, a series of guidelines
and suggestions and general musings only, designed to help you to direct your energies
and to clarify your thinking and your writing.
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 3
What’s Inside
Before moving on, let’s take a quick look at what’s under the hood.
Chapter 1, “Developing the Project,” talks about how to develop your interests
into a thesis project. You’ll learn strategies for exploring and articulating what fascinates
you about your History & Literature eld. And then you’ll learn about how to move
eciently from thinking about your project in terms of “topic,” which is too broad to
dene your thesis, toward thinking in terms of the basic building blocks of an extended
research project: primary sources and questions.
Chapter 2, “Writing the Proposal,” helps you to organize your raw materials from
the project development stage and then decide upon the best possible research question
to guide your thesis work. Your research question will be the key element of your
History & Literature senior thesis proposal. In this chapter we talk about what the
proposal is. We talk about what it isn’t. And we give you a few strategies for how you
might approach it.
Chapter 3, “Researching and Writing the Rough Draft,” lets you read more
about, you guessed it, conducting your research and writing the rough draft of your
thesis. We’ll talk about how to stay active as you engage your source material and search
for answers to your research question. We’ll explain how to break down the writing of
the rough draft into manageable pieces. And we’ll suggest some techniques designed to
help you to keep your thoughts owing from that brain of yours onto the page, where
they can be seen and shared.
Chapter 4, “Revising, the Final Frontier,” teaches you about the skill (and it is a
skill, which you can develop and improve through practice) of revising your work. Here
you will learn about the place where your thesis, like Frankenstein’s monster at the ash
of the lightning strike, will truly come alive.
Chapter 5, “Finishing the Job,” is really just a brief guide to the end of the project,
containing a few words on proofreading, formatting, and matters such as the kind of
paper you should use, where to buy thesis binders, etc.
The Appendices at the end of the handbook contain basic advice about funding your
research, some sample documents, and other goodies.
Acknowledgments
A Gordon Gray Faculty Grant for Writing Pedagogy funded the completion of this
guide. History & Literature would like to thank Jim Herron and the Expository Writing
Program at Harvard for overseeing and facilitating the process. Thanks also go to Sigrid
Cordell Anderson for commenting helpfully on early chapter drafts, and to the students
of History & Literature classes ’07, ’08, and ’09, who provided helpful thoughts and
“wish lists” for thesis guide content.
This handbook began under the direction of Kimberly Davis, who initially
spearheaded the project. Jeanne Follansbee, Stephanie Lin, and Amy Spellacy
commented and contributed during the drafting. And nally, future History &
Literature seniors owe a great debt of gratitude to Iliana Montauk ’06. It was she who
came to us originally with the idea for a senior thesis guide, and it was her enthusiastic
leadership that helped initially to lift the project o the ground.
page 4 | Chapter One:
There is one key element of the senior thesis year for
which no handbook will ever be a substitute, and that is
your thesis advisor. (In this handbook, we use the terms
“advisor” and “tutor” interchangeably. Your senior thesis
advisor will be a tutor from the Hist & Lit tutorial board,
and you may have an additional advisor who is an outside
faculty member at Harvard. The senior thesis project is
truly an independent project, and so must ultimately be
all your own. However, you are lucky to have at your side
a friendly, knowledgeable guide whose sole job is to help
you along the way. This is your advisor.
You should discuss potential thesis advisors with your
junior tutor. In Hist & Lit, students may request to
work with particular advisors. Look through the tutors’
interest pages on the Hist & Lit website. Peruse the
list of members of our Committee on Degrees. And be
sure also to consider newly hired tutors whose interests
might dovetail with your own.
Before you leave for summer after your junior year,
we ask you to hand in a form where you state in a
paragraph your ideas about the general topic of your
thesis and include a brief bibliography. There you may list
your preferences for tutors, if you have them. During the
summer, the Director of Studies and Associate Director
of Studies use these forms to create the best working
relationship possible for each and every student. We try
to honor student wishes whenever possible, but students
should also understand that we cannot always do so.
(It depends mostly on balancing teaching loads evenly
across the tutorial board.) Even if you aren’t matched
with your rst choice, you can be sure that the tutor with
whom you will be working will be well-qualied to help
you through the entire thesis process, from start to nish.
Tutors in Hist & Lit tend to be an amazing bunch. They
are extremely dedicated professionals and it is their job to
coach you through the senior thesis project. But you have
a job in all of this, too, and it’s more than just to write
the thesis. It is your job to help them help you. That is,
it’s your job to be honest with them, to tell them what
you’re thinking, and whenever possible, to tell them in
as precise terms as possible how they can help you most.
Each step of the way, you should work in close contact
with your advisor. Your tutor will often be your best
sounding board for testing out your ideas. As soon as
you can, you should be talking to your tutor about
your interests. Talk about the texts and ideas that you
think you might want to study further. Talk about the
questions you have.
HL99 is graded separately each semester with a
satisfactory (SAT) or unsatisfactory (UNSAT).
A
semester grade of SAT is awarded when you produce a
proposal and draft chapter in the fall and a completed
thesis in the spring. Your thesis will receive grades (and
comments!) in the spring, but your tutor will not have
any say in those grades. That’s right: your senior tutor
will never grade your senior thesis. This diers from
junior tutorial, when your tutor was one of the readers
of your junior essay. In senior tutorial, your tutor’s rst
and only duty is to be your mentor and advocate.
Here are a few further thoughts that will help you to
build a strong relationship with your tutor from the
very beginning that will last through the entire year.
How should I relate to my tutor?
There are many kinds of relationships that Hist &
Lit students have with their tutors. All should be
professional. It’s okay (and usually most benecial)
to develop a comfortable, informal rapport with your
tutor. But remember, too, that your senior tutorial is a
class that should be treated with the same amount of
respect as any other.
What can I and can’t I expect from my tutor?
Your tutor will help you to build your project from the
ground up. He or she will help you to nd resources and
will point you toward the correct people at the library
and in the rest of the university at large. He or she will
read drafts and comment on them. He or she will also
read some of the pertinent texts along with you in order
to help you think about how to tackle them.
Your Relationship with Your Advisor
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 5
Your tutor will not, however, do your work for you.
That is, your tutor will help you nd the right direction,
but don’t expect your tutor to give you all the answers.
Denitely don’t expect your tutor to dictate to you your
research question or provide you with the structure for
your research and writing. Your tutor’s job is to help
you to write the best thesis that you are able to write.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Remember that Hist & Lit tutors will be more than
generous with their time, but they can’t be there for you
24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In your very rst meeting
with your tutor, be sure to have a frank conversation about
your respective schedules. Talk about the communication
method (email? Skype? carrier pigeon?) and the hours
of the day that are best. Talk about what you and your
tutor expect for response times to emails. Some people
check email often; others not so often. Either is okay. It’s
simply important that you and your tutor agree on what
to expect from one another. And before you leave for
winter break, make a plan with your tutor for how and
when you’ll be in contact in December and January.
How can I help my tutor to help me?
Communicating what you want and need most to your
tutor is actually sometimes more dicult than it sounds,
but it’s crucial for a successful tutor-student relationship.
One way to begin this process is to think carefully about
your experiences in the past and especially about the
comments that you’ve received on your papers during
your time at Harvard. Look for patterns. Do you have
trouble organizing your arguments? Tell your tutor. Do
you have trouble organizing your time? Swallow your
pride and tell your tutor. Are you a strong close reader,
but maybe you have trouble connecting those readings to
larger issues? Tell your tutor. Or maybe you tend to think
big and your professors have always told you that you
need to do a better job of grounding your arguments in
more evidence? That’s right: tell your tutor.
Remember most of all that your tutor can’t help you
if you don’t tell her or him what’s on your mind, and
your tutor certainly can’t help you if he or she doesn’t
know that there is an issue that needs attention. The
absolute worst that you can do, therefore, is clam up
and not seek help from your tutor when you need
it. It is unfortunately a very common impulse among
students, so avoid it if you have it. Always keep in close
communication with your tutor, especially if you ever
feel stuck. Whatever you do, don’t ever go AWOL,
either physically or mentally, even if your rst instinct is
to try to hole up and just “get it done” (whatever “it”
happens to be at that stage of the game). It can only
hurt you.
I’m thinking about working with a faculty member
who’s not on the tutorial board as my thesis advisor.
How do I make this happen, and what are the pros
and cons?
The best match for a thesis advisor is someone who is
interested in your topic and who will be an eective
critic and editor, even if she or he is not an expert on
your topic. Be sure to choose someone with whom
you are likely to be comfortable working on a week
to week basis — to whom you would feel comfortable
turning not only when things are going well, but also
if you run into trouble with your work. This is perhaps
the most important element of an advisor-student
relationship, more important than specic expertise.
Keep in mind that you can always consult about
bibliography with experts in your eld even if they are
not your assigned advisor.
You may not choose for your advisor a teaching fellow
or lecturer who is not aliated with Hist & Lit, or a
professor from outside of Harvard. But if you believe
that a member of the Harvard faculty not on the Hist &
Lit tutorial board would be your best advisor, go to that
faculty member and present your thesis ideas as clearly
as you can. Ask her or him whether she or he would be
willing and available to advise your thesis.
If you choose to work with a faculty member not on
the tutorial board, we will provide a concentration
advisor who will keep you in touch with Hist & Lit
requirements and who will help you to prepare for your
oral examination. Note that it will be your responsibility
to negotiate the specic role that your concentration
advisor will play in your thesis work itself.
page 6 | Chapter One: Developing the Project
chapter one
Developing the Project
Runners, to your marks . . . It’s a cliché, and you’ll hear it from your tutors and professors
more than once if you haven’t heard it already, but the senior thesis is a marathon, not
a sprint. If you have had the typical college experience thus far, practically every other
assignment that you have completed as part of your coursework has been a sprint. It’s
been an essay on which you spend a few weeks at the very most (and usually much less
time than that) to conceive and to complete. In a sprint, it is possible to expend all of
your energy in one burst and still reach the nish line. You might collapse in a heap of
sweat and exhaustion at the end, but you can still make it.
A senior thesis cannot be a sprint. If you try to complete it in one single burst of
energy, you will collapse in that heap of sweat and exhaustion long before the nish is
even in sight. You won’t make it. For the senior thesis, you have to complete the project
one step at a time. You must methodically pace yourself so that you have enough in the
tank throughout the course of the race to make it to the end.
Think of project development as your training for the marathon to come. You’ve
done a great portion of this training already. You have learned, that is, in your classes
and your sophomore and junior tutorials, how to ask analytical questions and how to
conduct research. You’ve learned how to write a formal essay in which you introduce
an argument, defend that argument with evidence, and conclude that argument by
explaining its wider signicance.
In project development, the idea is to generate the raw materials of an extended
research project — as many of them as you possibly can — in a methodical and ecient
manner. It’s important to take your time, to cast your net widely, and to keep an open
mind. You want to make sure not to make nal decisions about what your project will
look like too hastily. You will, of course, eventually have to make some hard choices and
stick with them, so prepare yourself for that. But that comes later. During the project
development stage, you must allow yourself to dream a little.
Organizing Your Time
The rst step in any large project is to map out a clear work schedule for yourself.
Ideally, you want to integrate your thesis schedule comfortably into your schedule for
other classes, extracurricular activities, and life in general.
Start by mapping out all of the senior thesis deadlines so that you can have a rm
idea in your head of how much time you have for each step of the process. Your work
calendar should, at the very least, include the deadlines for the thesis proposal and the
draft chapter. Then, after you’ve learned more about each stage of the project by reading
this handbook, you should use your calendar to set more individualized deadlines. As
you progress through the rst semester of your senior year, you will eventually want to
work out a plan for each month and even each week of the project. You should regularly
talk about your calendar with your tutor, who can help you to set realistic goals for your
time and a comfortable schedule for your drafts.
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 7
On a week to week basis, we recommend that you spend as much time on your thesis
work as you would for a normal class. If you think about school as a 40-hour work week,
and if you are taking a regular load of four classes, this means that you should probably
devote about 10 hours of your time each week to HL99. We all know, of course, that it
is a rare Harvard student who works only a 40-hour week. College life tends to expand
hours. We also realize that some weeks have more time in them for thesis work than
others. But if you plan to spend, on average, about 10 solid hours per week on your
thesis work, you will make steady progress from start to nish.
It’s also important to remember that your senior thesis is only one aspect of your life,
not your entire life. The best theses are almost always not the ones that are all-consuming
in a given student’s life. Shutting yourself out from the rest of the world to the neglect of
everything else will not help you to be more “serious.” It actually will cause you to lose
perspective, which does not make for good analytical thinking and writing. Keep your
perspective. Stay integrated with the rest of your life.
From “Topics” to the Basic Building Blocks of Research
Once you’ve thought a bit about time organization (and remember, you will modify
your schedule regularly throughout the course of the project) it’s time to dive in. The
main trick to being methodical and ecient in the project development stage is to
start thinking about your thesis project, as soon as you possibly can, in terms of three
basic components:
1. topics of interest,
2. the primary sources that you might use to study those interests,
3. the questions that you have about your primary sources (and how they speak to your interests).
How you go about searching for and nding these components is, of course, completely
up to you. But nd them you must. There is no option there.
It’s perfectly natural to begin a project by describing its “topic.” Maybe you’re
thinking of writing about protest songs in the ’60s. Maybe it’s the medieval papacy.
Perhaps eighteenth-century Paris has always tripped your trigger. These are all great
general topics. It’s important to know, however, that a “topic” is far too broad to dene
your research project. Why? Because a “topic” alone doesn’t in and of itself lead to
a compelling scholarly argument. For that, you need to move from thinking about
“topic” toward thinking about the primary sources that you will use and the questions
(ideally one single question) that you will be asking.
Interests, primary sources, questions. Eventually, you will narrow your project down
by picking the “best” in each of these categories (more about that in Chapter Two).
But for now, in the project development stage, you want to generate as many interests,
primary sources, and questions as you can. These are the basic building blocks of any
research project, and the only blocks with which you should be playing at this stage of
the game.
page 8 | Chapter One: Developing the Project
Storming the Brain
The following brainstorming exercises are designed to help you move from thinking
about broad, general topic ideas, to thinking about primary sources, and then nally
toward more focused questions. Each exercise requires you to commit yourself to a
twenty- or thirty-minute session (no more, no less!). It’s probably best to do them on
separate days, but it’s up to you. The only real rule is that you have to nd a quiet and
calm place with no distractions. This is key. If you’re distracted, these exercises are not
nearly as useful.
You’ll rarely if ever hear anyone say it, but brainstorming actually takes practice. Yo u
get better at it the more you do it. So it will be very helpful to commit yourself to
several sessions. You don’t want to overdo it, of course, but you should at least do them
more than once. And in addition to your timed sessions, you might even want to have
them working perpetually in your head “on the back burner” as you go about your
daily business.
Sit down with your computer or some paper and a writing implement of your
choice and just write what comes to mind. Take a deep breath. Relax yourself. Write.
Remember that these brainstorming exercises are not tests, and no one will grade you
on the lists that you generate. You don’t even have to show them to anyone if you don’t
want. They are yours and for you alone.
Here again, in question form, are the fundamental issues that you must ponder:
• What within my eld am I interested in studying further?
• What primary sources could I realistically use to study those interests further?
• What, exactly, are the questions that I have about those sources and interests?
Brainstorming Exercises
Exercise A (20-30 minutes): Brainstorm topics of interest. In the rst brainstorm,
your job is to write down all of the possible “topics” that you might be interested in
researching further with your thesis. Here is where you list all of the themes, people,
places, texts, events, movements, images, etc., that you might possibly want to study in
detail. Nothing is o limits here. This is your chance to think big, so you can, if you like,
indulge your grandest aspirations. The only criterion is that whatever you write down
must capture your imagination and make you want to know more. What have you come
across in the past years that has fascinated you? What has surprised you? What authors
and genres and events and people keep you “coming back for more”? Just write down
whatever comes to your head. You will have plenty of time to revise later. Want to study
poverty? Write it down. Love? Fine. Put it on there. Do you like seventeenth-century
art? Write that down, too. Interested in Shakespeare? T.S. Eliot? World War II? Women?
Men? Frontier dentistry? Just write anything down that comes to mind that you might
consider to be a topic of possible research interest to you. As you can probably guess,
the purpose of this list is simply to help you locate the general areas where you might
conduct further research. Think of these as the rough locations on your treasure map
where you might start digging for your specic research question later.
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 9
Exercise B (20–30 minutes): Brainstorm primary sources. In the second
brainstorm, your job is to take that rst list of general topics of interest and then, for each
item, write down all of the possible primary sources that you have come across in the past
that you might use to study those general topics. There are a few items to think about
with this second exercise. First, you will notice that in this brainstorm you will generate
a very dierent type of list than in the rst. You will generate, that is, a list of specic
titles — “The Tempest” could be on this list, but “Shakespeare” could not; “the WPA slave
narrative records” would work quite well, but “slavery” or “oral histories” would not.
(It’s perfectly okay, by the way, if you can’t remember a name or title completely. As long
as you are referring to a specic source, just jot it down to the best of your memory: e.g.,
“that cool poem about pirates” is perfect.) Second, remember that primary sources don’t
necessarily need to be written records. They can be photos, songs, paintings, buildings,
maps — virtually anything that you can analyze. Third, note that you may not be able
to come up with any primary sources for some, perhaps several of the more general
“topics” from the rst brainstorming exercise. That tells you something important about
where you might conduct some supplemental, preliminary research later on. For now,
just take brief note of these topics and move on to the next exercise when you’re ready.
Exercise C (20-30 minutes): Brainstorm questions. For the last brainstorming
exercise, your job is to take stock of both lists that you generated earlier and then to start
asking some questions about the items on those lists. Don’t be critical at this point. As
with the rst list, here, the sky is the limit. Just write the questions that come to mind —
any questions, all questions. How did industrialization inuence Russian poetry at the
turn of the century? Why did Graham Greene write The Quiet American? Don’t worry
yet about whether they are “good” questions (there will be plenty of time for that later).
Just be sure to ask as many questions as you possibly can. Ask questions not just of your
topics of interest, but of the primary sources that you listed as well. You will be tempted
to ask whether there are other primary sources that you don’t know. That’s an important
question, so write it down. But try also to ask questions of the primary sources that
you do know. Questions, questions, and more questions. You can never ask too many
questions during project development. And the more you ask, the more you will know
that you are on the right track toward developing a strong thesis.
Supplementing Your Brainstorms: “Pre-research”
With each of these brainstorming exercises, you may feel the need to research your
ideas further in order to augment your lists. You may need to do this the most when
developing your list of primary sources. That is, you may nd, through brainstorming,
a particularly intriguing topic of interest and a ne set of burning questions about that
topic. But then you may have no idea about whether there are actually primary sources
available to you that will help you to nd some answers. You will want to review old
courses and papers and classroom discussions to see whether anything else jogs your
memory. You’ll pull out those old notes and syllabi and use them to supplement the
brainstorming lists that you initially drew up. And then, you’ll do some sleuthing for new
information, too. This will lead you to exploratory library visits and internet queries in
order “to read more about it.”
Remember what a primary
source is? Primary sources
are the documents and
“data” that we analyze
in our work. In History &
Literature these are the
“texts” (and remember
that “texts” are not just
written) that we analyze
and discuss. Secondary
sources comment on and/
or analyze primary sources.
page 10 | Chapter One: Developing the Project
This supplementary work of conducting pre-research in order to ll out your
brainstorming lists is the last crucial part of the project development stage. It’s also
extremely fun, because your job is simply to explore. Go to the library and search the
catalogs. Read, but also talk to human beings. Get in touch with the Hist & Lit research
librarian, Steve Kuehler, at kuehler@fas.harvard.edu. Make an appointment and go ask
some questions. This may require some courage, but it will pay great dividends if you do
it. Go and talk to members of the tutorial board and other Harvard faculty who teach
in your eld. You’ll be amazed at how much you can learn just from sending an email or
two and setting up a few short meetings.
Our main recommendation about “pre-research” is that you only do it after you’ve
brainstormed interests, primary sources, and questions each at least once all by yourself.
The purpose of brainstorming, after all, is to free up your brain and to allow it to “speak”
to you without prompting. Your goal is quite literally to tap into the recesses of your
unconscious to learn what truly fascinates you and what you really think. If you conduct
pre-research rst, you can’t be sure that your ideas — especially your ideas about what
interests you — are your own and not from others.
Keep in mind, nally, that going out and exploring in order to develop your brainstorm
lists is certainly research and a critical part of the senior thesis process, but it is not yet
your research project per se. It is still project development. You can think of it, if you like,
as collecting the necessary ingredients and stocking the kitchen for a delicious meal that
you will cook later. You will take some of those ingredients and mix them carefully and
in the proper measure in order to create the research project itself.
Chapter One Recap
Writing a senior thesis is a long haul, so you can’t try to do it all at once. You need to
pace yourself and not try to take on too much, too soon. You must also remain open to
the possibility of new ideas.
The basic building blocks of a research project are interests, primary sources, and
questions. A “topic” is too broad to dene your research. You must gure out what
primary sources are available for you to study and what questions you wish to ask about
your interests and about those primary sources. The project development stage is dicult
because it requires you to face the big picture. But the goal of project development is
simply to gather potential raw materials, nothing more. If you take your time, focusing
on one building block at a time and then adding a bit of sleuthing for supplemental
information, you will have generated all of the basic elements that you will need for
choosing a strong research project that’s right for you.
Brainstorm interests, primary sources, and questions. Write down your ideas.
Explore. Then brainstorm, write, and explore some more. That, in a nutshell, is project
development.
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 11
Writing the Proposal
Okay, you’ve spent some time gathering together the basic building blocks of a research
project in the form of articulated interests, primary sources, and a whole slew of questions.
Now your job is to start sifting through those raw materials and evaluating them. With
a ruthless critical eye, you must systematically discern which materials you will actually
use for your senior thesis project, and which materials you will set aside for another day.
Going back to the marathon metaphor, think of this next stage as the moment when
you truly start to settle into the race. You’ve rid yourself of all your pre-race jitters. The
initial adrenaline rush has fully subsided. You’re now “in the zone,” relying completely
on your training rather than raw instinct. There is no turning back now, so the next
step is to create for yourself a comfortable running pace where you’re not expending
any excess energy. You need to set your sights on your goal and build a rm picture in
your head of the marathon’s route: where the hills are, where the down-slopes should be
(where you can take a little rest), and perhaps most importantly, where all the landmarks
are so that you’ll be able to gauge your progress along the way.
In thesis project terms, this means that you need to zero in on the precise research
question that will drive your project to its nal completion and then draw up a plan for
answering it. You need, that is, to write your project proposal.
The Thesis Proposal Assignment
The end of the project development stage begins when you start to write up your
thesis proposal for concentration review. The assignment calls for all students to submit
a proposal of one page only, single-spaced, attached to another single-spaced page of
relevant bibliography (both primary and secondary sources). The guidelines are strict
because all of your tutors meet to discuss each and every student’s proposal. For this
discussion to work, proposals need to be short, concise, and very much to the point.
It’s easy to see this and immediately be frightened by the prospect of your tutors
meeting in a closed session to discuss your projects. Actually, it’s one of the greatest perks
of being a Hist & Lit concentrator. The sole purpose of this tutor meeting is to help
you. The tutors are instructed to answer one question and one question only: do they
think that this project, as proposed, is viable? Do they, that is, think that a student can
reasonably complete the proposed project in the amount of time available, and with the
resources that are available? That’s it. They do not meet to “judge” your proposal. They
certainly don’t meet to judge you. Think of it instead as a group of scholars all taking an
interest in what you are doing and lending a helping hand.
chapter two
page 12 | Chapter Two: Writing the Proposal
Finding Your Research Question
The central element of a strong project proposal is a focused and well-designed research
question. The prospect of having to reduce all of your ideas down into a single question
might send you into a panic. But you shouldn’t panic. The most dicult aspect of nding
a research question is the fact that the process requires you to be realistic (sometimes
painfully so) about what is possible. Finding a good research question requires you to
come to hard realizations about what you can actually accomplish in the time that you
have and with the resources that are available to you.
What’s nice is that there are only three fundamental criteria for a good research
question and you have 100% control over all three. The rub is that your question must
meet all three criteria for it to work. In the last chapter, we suggested that you write
down every interesting question that came to mind. We urged you not to be critical
yet, but rather just to write and to dream. Well, now is the time to start being critical.
If a potential research question meets only one or two of the three criteria — even if
you love it and you think it’s the only question that you would possibly be interested in
studying further (you would be wrong in this thought, by the way) — it won’t work and
you absolutely must eliminate it from contention.
Finding your research question can take several weeks of hard work, perseverance, and
some very dicult choices, so prepare yourself for that now. You will need your tutor
to help you, for often he or she will be the best and most objective judge. It will be
important to be as open as you possibly can be to her or his ideas.
Here are the three criteria against which you will test every potential research question
you have:
• Your question must genuinely intrigue you. If you look at the question and yawn, it’s not
a good research question for you.
• Your question must be analytical in nature. If your question is a “fact-nding” question,
it’s probably not a good research question. On the other hand, if your question articulates a
genuine puzzle, has no obvious answer, and instead requires you to interpret several elements of
a given topic and then formulate an opinion about it, chances are good that it’s a good research
question. Here’s a trick: “fact-nding” questions tend to start with the interrogative words
“what,” “who,” and “where.” Analytical questions tend to start with the interrogative words
“how” or “why.” Think about it. Another great trick is to recognize that an analytical question
creates a good discussion (at the dinner table in the dining hall, with your roommates, in the
classroom — anywhere). A fact-nding question does not, because once you’ve discovered
the answer to a fact-nding question, the discussion is over. Analytical questions have many
possible “right” answers. This multiplicity of possible answers leads to discussion and debate
(even better!) when people favor (as they tend to do) one of those answers over another. A
good analytical question is exactly the same as a good question for discussion.
• Your question must be answerable. Last, but not least, we come to the criterion that is the
most dicult to meet. There are a lot of great questions out there that are both interesting and
analytical, but that are nevertheless still not good questions for a Hist & Lit senior thesis project.
This is because many questions are ultimately unanswerable with the evidence available to you
and in the time that you have. Once a question has satised criteria #1 and #2, you have to think
honestly about how you would go about answering your question. You have to think about
availability of resources: Is there a body of source material available to you upon which you can
A strong research
proposal revolves around
a focused, well-conceived
research question.
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 13
realistically draw? Do you have to go somewhere else to get it? Will it be available to you when
you go? Does it cost money? You have to think about the actual contents of your source material
and whether that material could actually answer the question that you ask: How likely is it that
the source material will actually be able to answer my question? Does the source material contain
enough data/evidence to make an argument? And then, you need to realize that while six months
may seem like a lot of time right now, in research terms it can be lightning quick. You therefore
must think about the time that you have to conduct your research: Can you possibly read and
digest your source material in the time that you have to complete this project? Is it truly pos5sible
to conduct all of your research in the time that you have? If it’s a potentially enormous source base,
can you logically narrow it down to a more manageable size?
Resigning Yourself to Hard (but Ultimately Best) Choices
Remember that, as you test your favorite questions against these three criteria, you
will of necessity have to let go of some of your senior thesis dreams. (Not your dreams
in general, just your dreams for the senior thesis!) Do not discount this fact: it’s VERY
HARD to let some of those dreams go. But let them go you must. For the most frequent
and most dangerous pitfall that students run into in their senior thesis projects, hands
down, is the pitfall that comes from starting their project with an unanswerable research
question (i.e. a question that is too big, that has no sources, etc.).
Trust that if you throw out the unanswerable, unworkable questions now, even if
you love them, your future self will thank you, thank you, thank you for doing it. It can
mean all the dierence between a successful and unsuccessful project. Remember also
that if a question initially seems to be unworkable in light of the three criteria, it may
not be totally lost. You may be able to turn an unworkable question into a workable
one by doing some more preliminary research. You might not, for example, be able to
answer your burning questions about the 1937 Paris Exhibition and fascism or about
the inuences of Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities on the London upper class with one body
of sources. But your tutor, or a librarian, or one of your professors might be able to help
you nd another body of sources that would work.
You will discover that in this stage you will eliminate almost all of your favorite
questions. You might even eliminate every single one of them, in which case you will
need to brainstorm some more and repeat the process. Don’t get discouraged if this
happens! Work with your tutor. And remember that you’re doing yourself a huge favor
when you throw out the unworkable questions. You’re only setting yourself up for
hardship otherwise. If you do the senior thesis project in the right way — i.e. in the way
that is the most ecient and the most enjoyable — it’s this stage that takes the most and
hardest work. But eventually, with perseverance, you will nd that some questions will,
like the very best cream, rise to the top.
Again, enlist the help of your tutor. Show your tutor the ideas and questions you’ve
come up with and tell him or her why you think a question is a good one. Conversely,
if you love a question, but suspect that it might not meet all of the criteria, talk to your
tutor about that, too. Your tutor may agree with you that even though the question
interests you, it might not be the best question for a senior thesis. But your tutor might
also know about ways to turn it into a question that does work. You’ll never know until
you talk it out. This conversation will take up the rst few weeks of senior tutorial, both
in person and via email. But the more you talk it out now, the higher your success rate
will be later.
The most frequent and
most dangerous pitfall
that students run into
in their senior thesis
projects is the pitfall that
comes from starting their
project with an unanswerable
research question.
page 14 | Chapter Two: Writing the Proposal
Framing Your Question and Writing the Proposal Document
Once you have found your strong research question, your job in the proposal is to frame
it for an audience. This is the actual writing of the thesis prospectus document itself. If
you consult the small but useful selection of sample prospectuses in Appendix B, you
will see that there is some room for modest creativity. No two thesis prospectuses are
exactly the same. But generally, yours should begin with a general introduction of the
context for your question. Briey introduce the period and geographical location of
your study. Discuss the main issues that your study will address. The idea is to take your
readers, who you must presume know very little about your thesis subject, and teach
them the basics of what they need to know in order to understand and follow your
research question.
After introducing your question and providing context, you must situate your
research question within a scholarly discussion. This will require some library time, but
not as much as you might think. You must explain whether your research question has
been asked and answered by others. If the answer is yes, you must discuss where your
question has been asked before and describe the answers that scholars have provided
thus far. Include, if you can, some information about why you feel that the answers
that other scholars have provided are insucient, or how your project will contribute
to the debate by bringing new sources into the conversation. If no scholar has ever
asked the question that you are asking (this is more unlikely), the burden is on you to
explain the ways in which your research question can contribute to scholarship about
your primary source base.
Once you have introduced your question and situated it within scholarship, you must
describe the primary source base that you will use to answer that question. If you’ve
done the hard work of project development discussed in this handbook thus far, this part
should be very simple. Make sure you’ve clearly written your name, eld in Hist & Lit,
tutor, and working thesis title at the top of the page. And nally, tack on a bibliography
of the primary sources and secondary sources that are relevant to your thesis proposal.
Try Not to Argue: Let Your Sources Speak for Themselves
You will probably think of some possible answers to your question, and you might even
have some ideas about a provisional argument. Before you include an argument in your
proposal, however — even a provisional argument — stop for a minute to consider
this. Remember that you haven’t done much research yet. Is it reasonable for you to
know enough to answer your question before you’ve researched it fully? If you try to
formulate an argument before you’ve conducted your research, you risk running into
the problem of not allowing your sources to speak for themselves. That is, if you begin
your research with an argument already rmly in place, you end up trying to “prove”
that argument with your sources. This may work out if your argument is supportable.
But if it’s not, you’re in trouble. Start instead with your well-designed, strong research
question and then allow your sources to help you focus on the best answer. In short, let
your sources talk to you.
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 15
Is There Any “Give” in the System?
Now, you might be thinking, “The proposal is due only a few weeks into the semester,
so what if I’m still not entirely sure of what I’m doing when I submit my proposal?
What if I change my mind?” These are perfectly logical questions to be asking at this
point, but our response is that you shouldn’t worry.
Might your research question change over time? Yes. It’s possible, even probable, that
your research question will evolve as you move further down the path. You will make
adjustments to it (usually you will narrow it even further) based on what you nd as part
of your research. This is perfectly normal.
It does happen, however, that students will have their proposals accepted by the
tutorial board and yet still nd it necessary, later in the game, to change their project in a
dramatic way. If at any time in the project you think this might be necessary, you should
talk to your tutor immediately! Ninety-nine times out of 100, your tutor will be able to
help you to right the ship and continue along your way. But if you and your tutor agree
that a change is in order, you simply need to talk to the Director of Studies about it and
come up with a new plan.
Rewriting Your Proposal
Once the tutors have met to discuss your proposals, they will decide whether you should
move on from the development stage of your senior thesis work to the research and
writing stage. Your own tutor will report back to you about the discussion. Often, tutors
will have some very specic advice for ways in which to make your project better: ways
to narrow your question productively, primary sources about which you might not
know, and scholarship that will be helpful for you to consult and to think about as you
continue your work.
Sometimes, however, the tutors will require students to rewrite and to resubmit their
proposals. If this happens to you, don’t be embarrassed. It simply means, once again, that
they thought that you would have diculty completing your project as proposed. The
Director of Studies will contact you to inform you that you should revise and resubmit
your proposal, and your tutor will give you specic information about what you will
need to change.
It cannot be reinforced strongly enough: if this happens to you and you are asked
to resubmit, you should not sweat it. Every year, students are asked to rewrite their
proposals, and all go on to complete their projects. It is not punishment. It is simply to
help you to develop your project further and to nd that workable research question.
If you are asked to
rewrite and resubmit
your proposal, it is not
punishment; it is simply
to help you to develop
your project further and
to find a strong, workable
research question.
page 16 | Chapter Two: Writing the Proposal
Chapter Two Recap
As you write up your thesis proposal, the most frequent and most dangerous pitfall that
students encounter in their senior thesis projects is the pitfall that comes from starting
their project with an unanswerable research question. Do everything you can to avoid
this trap.
Another very common mistake that students make is to write a proposal in which
they plan to “prove” a hypothesis or argument though their research. Frame your thesis
proposal around a viable research question: a question that interests you, a question that
is analytical, and a question that is answerable with the sources that you have and in the
time that you have.
Finally, if you are asked to revise and resubmit your proposal, it is not punishment. It
is simply to help you to develop your project further and to nd a workable research
question.
Don’t forget to refer to Appendix B in the back for some sample senior thesis
proposals written by Hist & Lit students in the past!
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 17
Researching and Writing
the Rough Draft
So, now what? You’ve done so much already. You’ve explored possible topics and
developed them by thinking about primary sources and questions. You’ve winnowed
your ideas down to a strong guiding research question — one that interests you, that
is analytical, and that is answerable. And you’ve framed your research question in your
thesis proposal and had that proposal fully vetted by the Hist & Lit tutorial board.
What’s next?
Now it is time for the researching and writing phase of the project to begin. Ideally,
researching and writing should be complementary, integrated activities. The one self-
critique that virtually all seniors express after nishing their theses is that they wish they
had started to write earlier than they actually did. In this chapter, we will therefore try
to provide you with strategies designed to help you to research and to write at the same
time. The idea to keep in mind is that the goal of this stage is not to write the nal draft.
The goal is to create a rough draft, which is utterly and completely dierent.
Too often, students do not distinguish enough the essential dierences between a
rough draft and a nal draft. A rough draft is not just a less-polished version of the nal
draft. It is a completely dierent animal! In writing the rough draft, you are only creating
for yourself a tool for discovering your ideas and gathering them together in a coherent
form. It is a crucial tool, one that you cannot do without. But it is a tool nonetheless,
and so it is important that you not agonize over it and that you write it as quickly and
eciently as possible.
Being an Active Researcher
Remember that your goal in research is very simple: it is to answer your research
question — nothing more, nothing less. Because you have asked an analytical question
(i.e., a question with more than one possible “right” answer and that therefore is a
good question for discussion), you won’t be able to nd your answer just by “looking
it up.” You will need to collect evidence. You’ll need to listen to what that evidence
tells you. And you’ll need to use that evidence to decide for yourself the best answer
to your question.
To conduct research eciently, you will need to concentrate on being active and
never passive. Being an active researcher does not mean only that you are “alert”
while reading, with pen and paper always at the ready, although perhaps it means that,
too. It means that you should constantly be engaging your source material head-on,
interrogating it with your research question and pulling out any answers that it might
yield. You should be acting upon your sources, rather than just allowing them to act
upon you.
The main reason that students grow passive when researching is that they lose sight of
the question that they are asking. Without the question in mind, it’s impossible to know
what, exactly, might be important in the sources. As a result, students either try to note
chapter three
page 18 | Chapter Three: Researching and Writing the Rough Draft
everything down or (more common) they note nothing at all. To avoid this time-and-
energy-wasting passivity, recite your research question like a mantra in your head. Write
it on a note card or a post-it and attach it to your computer. Write it on the back of your
hand if you must. Just do whatever you can to keep it at the forefront of your mind. If
you do that, you will always be active as you research.
Making a Plan: Thinking about Draft “Chapters”
To nd answers to your research question eciently, you want to begin by organizing
your research into small, manageable parts. The best way to do this is to start thinking
about a provisional structure for your rough draft document right away. This may seem
premature to some of you, but remember that the rough draft is just a tool that you
are creating for later use. It’s not your nal draft. It’s a preliminary organization of your
research in loose essay form, and nothing more.
Any project will have many possible organizational structures, so the idea is to nd a
strategy of approach that works best for you. In close conversation with your tutor, think
about the best ways to organize your research work into logical, workable pieces. These
pieces will become the provisional “chapters” of your rough draft.
Usually, your source base will dictate how you structure your rough draft. Think
rst about natural divisions that exist in your sources. Can you divide your source
base by texts? By genres? By themes? Locations? Authors? Chronology? A provisional
organization scheme might place a primary text or set of texts at the center of each draft
“chapter.” It might focus on particular chronological moments, or individual locations
relevant to your research.
For whatever logical organization scheme you choose for your research, sit down
again with your work calendar and gure out deadlines for each “chapter” of your rough
draft. Remember that these chapters are provisional only. They may not correspond at
all to the chapters of your nal draft. They are simply a way into your project so that you
can interrogate a logical portion of your source base with your research question and
present how the evidence leads you to an answer or set of answers.
Taking Notes and Writing Daily
When taking notes, be sure to do more than just write down page numbers and
quotations. Your notes should also consist of more than a collection of highlighted
passages in your books or sticky-note arrows axed to pages. You must realize that the
purpose of taking notes is not just to cull data from your source material. It is to transfer
what is going on in your mind as you read and interpret the evidence into written form.
In other words, your notes need to do work for you. They need to help you to combine
researching and writing into a single exercise.
You will need a good system for recording your ndings accurately and consistently. If
you read ten dierent books about how to conduct research, you will learn ten dierent
note-taking techniques for your research. We’re not going to tell you here precisely
which one you should use. You’ve learned plenty during your time in high school
and college, and it’s quite frankly a choice that students need to make for themselves.
So, whether you’re most comfortable using spiral notebooks, legal pads, note cards, or
computer note-taking and database software, it’s important that you nd a note-taking
technique that consistently works for you and that ultimately allows you to record your
data and ideas in a usable form.
Are you thinking about
conducting human subject
research, like doing oral
history interviews? Find out
whether your project needs
review and approval by
visiting the Undergraduate
Research Training Program
(URTP) Portal, https://cuhs
.harvard.edu/urtp-portal.
Contact the Director of
Studies with any questions!
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 19
You will also need to nd a good routine for your research sessions in which you both
read and write. For each session, be sure to allot enough uninterrupted time (an hour is
ne; two to four hours are usually best). Then plan to spend about 80% of your session
time reading and annotating (i.e., noting information with page numbers, highlighting,
jotting down thoughts in a notebook or on a computer or in margins or on post-its —
whatever helps you to record your data in usable form). After this, we suggest that you
spend the last 20% of each session actually writing paragraphs or pages.
The trick — and this trick works wonders — is to spend this last 20% of your time
writing in complete sentences. Forcing yourself to write in complete sentences each and
every time you research will help you to formulate your ideas coherently and completely.
Students grow comfortable writing in short-hand when they take notes, and the eect is
that their thoughts are never allowed to take full form. If you spend some time writing
every time you research, you’ll be amazed at how quickly you’ll amass page after page of
written work — work that you can then directly transfer to your rough draft. Record
data and jot down thoughts and ideas for an hour or two or three or four, write some
sentences, and you’re done for the day. Research really can be as simple as that.
Here is a series of exercises that we suggest for your complete-sentence writing sessions
at the end of a day’s research:
• Briey summarize. Summary is not always the most useful tool to the researcher because
it does not require analytical thinking. So be careful not to overdo it. However, writing out
a brief summary (three or four sentences usually does the trick) of a text or a passage in your
own words can sometimes help you to see elements that you may miss the rst time through. It
can also be useful later as you compile your rough draft when you need to give a short synopsis
for your reader. Again, it’s important to write out these summaries in your own words. It will
force you to see things through your own eyes and not through the eyes of others.
• Work out possible arguments in answer to your research question. For every piece
of primary or secondary source evidence, write out in paragraph form what that source tells
you in light of your research question. This is not the same as a summary. Instead, you’re
putting the content of your source material to analytical use and writing out how it could
help you to answer your research question. You will nd sometimes that the source material
on which you worked that day helps you to answer your research question very little, or even
not at all. If this is the case, try to write about why it does not help you, and then also try to
write about the kinds of questions that your source could help you answer. Remember that if
a source does not answer your research question, it’s not necessarily useless. It might (by not
answering your question) actually help you to sharpen your research question by showing
you what is not relevant.
• Put the source in dialogue with the rest of your source material. Last, try to write some
sentences in which you answer for yourself how the material relates to other source material
that you have consulted. Does it contradict? Does it support? Does it suggest a pattern? Or
does it seem inconsistent with what you’ve already learned? If it is a secondary source that
makes an argument, do you agree or disagree? Why?
Remember that your
tutor is not your only
resource! Our Hist & Lit
librarian, Steve Kuehler,
can also help with your
research questions.
Get in touch with him at
page 20 | Chapter Three: Researching and Writing the Rough Draft
Keep in mind that in these short writing exercises, the only “wrong” way to do them is
not to write in complete sentences. Otherwise, the sky is the limit. What you write is all
your own — it’s simply a means for you to put your thoughts on paper in usable form.
Realize also that these exercises do not have to take a great deal of time. Do yourself
a favor and keep it simple. Answer the simple questions that we suggest and rattle o a
paragraph or two in 15 or 30 minutes. If you're inspired to write more, terric; but if
not, you're done for the day!
Assembling the Rough Draft
You should begin compiling your actual rough draft document as soon as you possibly
can. You want to give yourself some time to gather data and to ponder the evidence
that you nd, of course. But as early as you can, you should start thinking about possible
answers to your research question, and how you might present those answers in essay
form. In your weekly sessions with your tutor, talk in as much detail as possible about
what you are nding, or not nding, in your research. Brainstorm together about how
you might use your evidence to formulate an answer to your research question. And
then take the complete sentences that you’ve been writing at the end of each research
session and start to arrange them in loose essay form, lling in the gaps along the way
whenever you feel you are able.
For the drafting itself, you have a large number of very good resources available to
you through the Harvard Writing Center and Expository Writing Program. These can
help you with outlining, structuring, and executing your writing. But basically, you
should focus your eorts on four main elements. You need all four of these elements for
a complete rough draft, but it’s not necessary (and probably not even useful) to try to
write them out in order.
Here are the four elements that every rough draft must contain:
• An introduction of your argument. This is where you introduce the basic question that
you are answering in your research and place your answer in dialogue with other scholars. You
already did some of this in the thesis proposal. But in the rough draft, you want to esh out
the ideas and discussion a bit more. You want to write out all of the details that are necessary
for understanding your research question and the sources that you are using. You want to write
about the scholarship that addresses your research question, and about how your argument
relates to this scholarship. Does it agree? Does it disagree? Does it modify? In what ways?
Spend some time exploring these issues with your tutor, and write down what you think.
• An answer to your research question. This answer is your main argument, or thesis
statement. Remember when we advised you not to argue in your thesis proposal? Well, the
research phase is where you start to think about arguing. Formulating an argument takes some
hard work. It requires you to let your evidence speak to you and not the other way around.
Don’t be too hasty to reach a conclusion, but as you read, always be thinking about the possible
answers to your research question. Talk them over with your tutor every step of the way. And
write them down. Each of your thesis chapters should have an argument, and all of those
arguments should address the thesis’s research question.
Back up your work after
each work session. Senior
surveys have reported that
almost 10% experienced
computer failure at
some point during their
thesis work. Don't be
a victim of bad luck!
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 21
• A presentation of how your evidence supports your argument. This is the largest part
of your rough draft, where you write out how the evidence that you are gathering in your
research leads you to your argument. Here is where you will translate the provisional structure
for your rough draft into “chapters” of your draft. For each draft chapter you will write out,
in as systematic a manner as possible, how a given portion of your research data answers your
research question. This part of your rough draft will feel clunky. Parts of it might feel bloated.
Others will feel incomplete. Pieces will be disconnected, disjointed, and disordered. Some
sections might even feel a bit wrong. That’s all okay. The goal here is to lay out your evidence
for yourself and yourself alone, to describe what it says and how it supports your argument.
That’s it.
• A basic statement about the implications of your argument. This is a component
of the rough draft that students often skip, but it’s the most important part! This is where
you start to write out your thoughts about the broader implications of your answer to your
research question. It’s where you return full circle to the information that you provided in
the introduction of your argument. Write out how your argument allows you to understand
your primary sources in a new way. Write out how your argument allows you to contribute
productively to the scholarly debate about your subject. And write about how your argument
leads to new questions and new ideas.
Remember that there’s nothing really at stake in the rough draft. It’s just a narrative of
your notes — a gathering place for your ideas, loosely structured in essay form. You will
notice that nowhere have we even remotely suggested that you’re writing “Your Thesis”
in this stage. You are writing its early, distant, evolutionary cousin. Once you’ve nished
the rough laying out of your ideas and evidence, then (and only then) you will use the
rough draft as the nal tool that you will need to put together the nal product.
Again, regular communication with your tutor will be vitally important as you
compile your rough draft. Remember that you can’t expect your tutor to do your
research or to answer your question for you (why would you want that anyway?). But
in your weekly conversations with your tutor you should slowly but surely start to
consolidate what you are nding in your primary source materials and begin to narrate
those ndings on the page. Bounce your ideas o of your tutor. Tell her or him what
your hypotheses are and about the evidence that leads you to those hunches. Your tutor
will help you to know whether your evidence actually supports what you are saying and
will help you to develop those ideas and hypotheses into strong arguments.
Thinking about Audience
This is rarely discussed enough when students rst learn to write, but writing is often
signicantly easier when you picture yourself writing “to” someone. Your thesis has a
natural audience already built into the system: members of the tutorial board and/or
other Harvard faculty who have some expertise in your eld. But this isn’t quite the
audience that you should be picturing as you draft. To write the rough draft usefully and
to write it clearly, it can be extremely helpful to picture a particularly friendly, intelligent
person in your life to whom you imagine that you are writing directly, as though your
thesis were a letter. This person could be your tutor, if you like. But it is usually better to
choose a close friend or family member.
page 22 | Chapter Three: Researching and Writing the Rough Draft
The idea is to picture someone who is a receptive, warm, and completely non-
judgmental force in your life. This might be your roommate, your best friend from
childhood, a member of your family, etc. It ultimately doesn’t matter whom you picture
as your audience, but it should be a real person whom you know personally, and it should
be a person who doesn’t necessarily know a whole lot about your topic and ideas. Writing
“to” this person will help you to explain your ideas clearly, carefully, and condently.
Citing Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism
One last concern to consider carefully as you research and write your rough draft is
plagiarism. By now, you should know that plagiarism is bad, but if you haven’t heard it
yet, here it is, just for the record: Please do not steal other people’s words or ideas. It’s not
a nice thing to do. It’s horribly self-destructive. And it’s incredibly unnecessary.
But this is not the kind of plagiarism that we’re most worried about. While some
plagiarism is intentional, some plagiarism actually happens by accident. Note well: both
kinds of plagiarism, intentional and unintentional, result in the same penalty — they are,
that is, equal crimes in the eyes of the Harvard Honor Council.
You must never allow accidental plagiarism to happen to you. You must cite every
word and every idea in your rough draft that is not your own. The way to do this is to be
vigilant and methodical about exactly writing down where your information is coming
from as you take notes. If you quote verbatim, do so self-consciously and explicitly; use
clear quotation marks and write down the author, title, and page number of the source.
If you are working in translation, you must cite the name of the translator. And then, as
you write your rough draft, you should try to write out citations that are as complete
as possible. This is sometimes frustrating because citing sources takes time. But any time
that you devote to citation now is time that you won’t have to spend later. And it will
help you to eliminate any chances for accidental plagiarism.
Keep in mind that watching out for plagiarism is also a very good way to gauge
how analytical your writing is. If you nd yourself simply retelling what other people
have written, it’s likely that you’re not being analytical enough in your thinking. This
is a good time to seek help from your tutor about how to approach your issue from a
stronger critical angle.
In citing sources, Hist & Lit allows students to use either University of Chicago or
MLA (Modern Language Association) citation style. The former is preferred by most
history journals. The latter is the chosen style of most literature journals. Neither citation
style is better than the other, but most writers have a clear preference for which one they
like to use. The only two rules are that you must use one of these citation styles, and that
you must ONLY use one of these styles. You cannot mix and match.
Submitting a Draft Chapter for Concentration Review
In late November or early December, Hist & Lit requires all seniors to submit at least
12–15 pages of work in progress to the concentration for formal review. The purpose
of this assignment is not to induce panic. It is simply to help you to keep moving at a
decent pace through the middle stages of your project.
It is entirely likely that you won’t be nished putting together your entire rough draft
when you have to hand in your work in progress. This is perfectly normal, and perfectly
ne. Your goal should be to take one of your provisional chapters and develop it into a self-
Both kinds of plagiarism,
intentional and
unintentional, result in the
same penalty — they are
equal crimes in the eyes of
the Harvard Honor Council.
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 23
contained essay. You must make an analytical argument in your work in progress, defend
that argument with primary source evidence, and situate that argument in dialogue with
some secondary scholarship, so an introduction to your thesis will probably not work
for this assignment. But remember that this draft “chapter” does not need to contain the
main argument of your thesis as a whole. In fact, it should not, because your main thesis
argument should require more than 12–15 pages to make persuasively!
Talk to your tutor in early November about what you might submit for your draft
chapter. The concentration will evaluate your submission and determine whether you
have progressed far enough in your thesis work. If your draft “chapter” reveals that you
might be struggling with your thesis work, you may be asked to meet with a member
of the Hist & Lit administrative team, and perhaps to resubmit work before the winter
break. Should this happen to you, just as in the proposal review process, you should not
be embarrassed. The purpose of submitting your work in progress for review is simply to
make sure that you are on track. If you’re not on track, you want to know about it and
plan how to x the problem in December rather than in February!
In December, all seniors participate in a draft chapter peer review workshop with
other Hist & Lit seniors and one or two tutors. These workshops oer the opportunity to
learn about other seniors’ projects and to get valuable feedback on your own. Workshops
are scheduled during reading period, and the Assistant Directors of Studies will be in
touch about them in late November.
Augmenting Your Research Plan
Occasionally students realize, as they work on constructing the rough draft, that they
need more or dierent evidence to make their claims. This realization can be a dicult
moment in the thesis writing process, so it’s important to remain calm if it happens to
you. Usually, the need for additional research means that you will spend a few more weeks
reading source material, taking notes, and writing the suggested complete-sentence
exercises. But sometimes it takes going back through the process of hunting for primary
source evidence — talking further with professors and experts in your eld, culling
secondary material in search of further primary source evidence, and enlisting again the
help of the research librarian assigned to Hist & Lit students.
If, in conversation with your tutor, you decide that you need more evidence for your
argument, you will need to ask yourself the hard question of whether it’s really a case of
needing more evidence, or whether the evidence is actually not saying what you once
thought it did. If the answer is the latter, then you will need to change your argument.
If you decide that you need more evidence, however, you must then ask whether this
evidence actually exists. If the evidence does exist, you spend a few more weeks going
out and nding it. But if it doesn’t, you may again need to change your argument, or
even change your research question altogether to address more closely the primary
source material that you do have.
This requires quick, decisive action and sometimes even conversation with the
Director of Studies. Obviously, it is far easier to correct this problem if you can catch it
early in the game, so it is absolutely crucial that you discuss with your tutor each and
every week whether your sources are speaking directly to your research question. You
must be brutally honest in these conversations. You are doing yourself no favors if you
hide the fact that you are nding little useful data in your research.
In your work in progress
for concentration review,
you must make an
analytical argument,
defend that argument with
primary source evidence,
and situate that argument
in dialogue with some
secondary scholarship.
page 24 | Chapter Three: Researching and Writing the Rough Draft
Chapter Three Recap
The goal of the research and rough draft writing stage is to answer your research
question in loose essay form. It’s important to write as you research and to think about
researching and writing as complementary, not separate activities. It’s crucial, furthermore,
to understand that the rough draft is completely dierent from the nal draft. It is a
storehouse of your ideas that you will use later as a tool for completing your nal draft.
You should strive to be an active researcher. This means not just writing as you research,
but also keeping your research question rmly in mind and making sure that you are
using it to interrogate each and every one of your sources, both primary and secondary.
In writing the rough draft you should, in consultation with your tutor, formulate an
argument, introduce that argument, describe how your evidence supports that argument,
and explain the broader implications of that argument. And as you research and write,
you should always be careful to cite any ideas and words that are not your own. If you
didn’t think it, or if you didn’t choose the words, make sure that you’ve accurately
explained and documented whence it comes.
Last, in each and every weekly conversation with your tutor, talk about how directly
your primary sources are speaking to your research question. If you nd that the
evidence is not answering your question, you must decide whether you need to modify
your question, or whether you simply need to do a little more research.
Remember that researching and rough draft writing does not have to feel, and indeed
should not feel, like agony. Researching and writing is fun. As you conduct your research
and write your rough draft, you should feel like you’re in conversation with someone
who has interests similar to your own. Together, you’re guring out a good answer to
that fascinating question you’ve worked hard to devise during project development.
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 25
Revising, the Final Frontier
Now that you’ve made a great deal of headway in assembling your rough draft, it’s time
to start thinking about how to use it as a tool for creating the nal product. To return
yet again to our marathon metaphor, you’re now well into the race and the majority is
actually behind you. You’re starting to sense the nish line. The crowds are a bit thicker
along the race path and the excitement is palpably starting to build. You still have a few
miles to go, however, so you want to continue to pace yourself and work methodically
toward the end. You’re even starting to get a little tired and your muscles run the risk of
straining, so you must use the energy you have left in the most ecient way possible. To
cross the nish line in stride, you absolutely cannot break into a sprint too soon.
This last major stage of the Hist & Lit senior thesis marathon is the revising stage.
Revising receives a chapter all its own in this handbook because all too often, the process
of revision is overlooked. Students think about it in the nal week or two of the project,
when there is little time and even less brain energy left to devote. And they think of
revising as simply a process of “cleaning up.”
Revising should ideally be a much larger part of the project than this. It involves,
literally, “re-seeing” (our word comes from the Latin, revisere, “to look at, visit again”).
You should devote just as much time to it as you devoted to the assembly of the rough
draft. It is where you take its raw materials and rearrange, eliminate, and augment them
to create the nal draft.
The precise task of the revising stage is therefore to take your rough draft and help it to
evolve into its nal form. Remember that your rough draft contains four basic elements:
an introduction of your research question, in which you establish your research question
and place it in dialogue with other scholars; an answer to your research question, which
is your main argument; a presentation of your evidence, in which you systematically
explain how primary source evidence supports your argument; and a conclusion of
your argument, in which you explain the broader implications of your argument. You
must now develop these elements into a tight, coherent essay, with a critical eye toward
improving their precision, their clarity, and their persuasiveness.
Developing a Productive Critical Eye: Thinking in Relative
Terms about Precision, Clarity, and Persuasiveness
The revising stage is all about developing a productive critical eye and using it to improve
your work. The important word here is productive. Writers typically tend toward one of
two critical thinking extremes: they are either not critical enough about their work, or
they are too critical of their work. You know which type of self-critic you are. Either
you write and everything looks brilliant to you, or you write and slowly but surely
determine that nothing you say is “good” enough. The former leads to sloppy writing;
the latter leads to writer’s block. Both are deadly enemies of thesis progress. Your goal is
to reach a perfect happy medium between the two extremes. You want to be suciently
critical of your work so that it is always improving. You want not to be too critical of
your work so that it is always progressing.
chapter four
page 26 | Chapter Four: Revising, the Final Frontier
As you work to develop a productive critical eye (and it takes work and practice!),
a good trick is to think only about precision, clarity, and persuasiveness as your critical
categories. Eliminate all other criteria from your vocabulary. Another trick is to realize that
the primary reason that writers become unproductively (be it hypo- or hyper-) critical
of their work is that they critique it according to absolute, rather than relative categories.
Absolutes — “good,” “bad,” “right,” “wrong” — are rarely, if ever, useful categories of
critical analysis. The reason is that “good” and “bad,” “smart” and “not smart,” can’t mean
anything on their own. No scholarship is inherently “good” or inherently “bad.” There is
only scholarship that is “better” and “worse” than other scholarship: what actually exists
are relative, rather than absolute, qualities.
Try to work, therefore, in relative terms. Your goal in revising is to make your work
more precise, to render it more clear, and more persuasive than it was before. As you write
and rewrite your ideas, you are continually transforming your work from a less precise,
less clear, and less persuasive state toward a more precise, more clear, and more persuasive
state. That’s all revising is, really. If you focus your critical eye on these three relative
categories and forget about everything else (truly, just these three and nothing more!),
you will always be productively critical of your work. Your writing will improve every
time you work on it. And best of all, you will never get in your own way and hinder
your own progress.
Working the Thesis Statement
In the revising stage, you rst job is to start honing your thesis statement down to size.
Ideally, your reader should be able to read your thesis statement and know exactly what
the main message of the thesis document will be. Revising your thesis statement is
thus a crucial step in writing a precise, clear, and persuasive senior thesis. Many thesis
statements contain several sentences, and this is ne.
In conversation with your tutor, take each and every key concept that you use in
your argument and ask whether it conveys exactly what you want it to mean. Make
sure that every term holds precise meaning: terms such as “society,” or “religion,” “class,”
or “culture,” for example, can always be claried more specically. Remember also that
precision is relative. The key is to strive constantly to make your terms more precise than
they were before. Make sure that your thesis statement contains information about the
“who” or the “what” of your argument, the “where” and the “when” of your argument.
Narrow your terms as much as you possibly can to reect precisely what you are going
to discuss in your thesis. If you are arguing about “The Middle Ages” or “modern
America,” ask yourself whether you need to be more specic. Can you narrow it down
to a year or xed set of years? For the location of your argument, are you really talking
about an entire nation, for example, or might you more precisely be talking about a
particular region? Are you talking about all Americans, or rather one very specic group
of Americans (of a certain class, of a certain ethnicity, of a certain city, neighborhood,
etc.)? And what about your sources? Have you mentioned your specic source base in
your argument? Are you talking about all of Walt Whitman’s poetry? Or just a specic
book, or even just a specic poem?
Being a productive self-
critic requires thinking
in relative, rather than
absolute terms as
you assess the quality
of your work.
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 27
Finding the Best Structure for Your Ideas: Tell a Good Story
Once you have started running your thesis statement through the critical gauntlet,
it’s time to think about how best to convey that argument to an audience. Too often,
students forget that the main purpose of writing the senior thesis is to communicate ideas
to the world. In communicating your argument successfully, you must frame it and
present it in terms that your reader can understand.
In researching and writing the rough draft, you began by developing a provisional
structure for your ideas. Now that you’ve laid out your ideas according to this provisional
arrangement, your job is to critique that structure and to gure out ways to make it
stronger. The structure of your thesis helps you to make your thesis argument more
precise, more clear, and more persuasive. So, in conversation with your tutor, you should
discuss the best ways to order your thoughts and evidence so that you can present them
in a logical, coherent, and convincing way. Remember that there is never only one way
to communicate an idea to an audience. Think again about how many chapters you
want your thesis to contain and what the precise argument of each of those chapters
should be.
A very common mistake is to assume that readers know far more than they actually
do about the subject of the thesis. The result is that students neglect to tell the whole
story. Don’t ever forget that you have a story to tell with your thesis, and that all theses,
like traditional stories, must contain a beginning, middle, and end. Most students spend
all of their time on the middle parts of their stories, which is where the analysis is,
but then overlook entirely the beginning and end. Don’t ever assume that your reader
already knows the beginning and end of the story that you want to tell.
Here again is where picturing a friendly, but non-expert close friend as your conversant
can be incredibly useful. The more you have that person rmly in mind as you write “to”
him or her, the more likely you will be able to narrate your story precisely, clearly, and
convincingly. And if you’re worried about providing too much “common knowledge,”
ask your tutor for specic advice.
Critiquing Evidence
The last element of revising, as you hone your thesis statement and nd the best structure
for your ideas, involves thinking about how well your evidence supports your argument.
This is sometimes very dicult to do alone, so regular discussion with your tutor about
evidence will be crucially important. It’s another cliché, but it can sometimes be helpful
to envision yourself as a lawyer making a case to a jury. You must convince the jury that
your particular answer to your research question is the best one out there.
In conversation with your tutor, ask yourself the following questions: Does your
evidence really say what you claim? Do you have enough evidence to make your claim?
Have you considered all of the obvious counterarguments? The more you put your
evidence to the test, the more persuasive your arguments will become, and the more
successful your thesis project will be.
Are you working with a
complete rough draft that
contains all four prescribed
elements? If not, you are
doing yourself a disservice
by continuing onward. If
you’re not sure, talk to
your tutor immediately and
devise a good plan
for proceeding.
page 28 | Chapter Four: Revising, the Final Frontier
More about Content
Here are some further items to consider carefully during the revising stage.
• Text and Illustrations: Illustrations may be inserted in the text or at the back. High-
quality digital images are preferable to photocopies. Make sure that you properly cite the
sources of illustrations.
• Style: Every student has her or his own writing style, but be sure to consult the University
of Chicago’s The Chicago Manual of Style or the Modern Language Association’s Style
Manual for grammatical rules. The Expository Writing Program guide, Writing with
Sources, is also very useful.
• Quotations: Quotations of four lines or fewer, surrounded by quotation marks, should be
incorporated into the body of the text. Longer extracts should be indented and should not
include quotation marks. Each quotation should be accompanied by a reference.
• Translations: If you are quoting from a non-English source, you may quote in the original
language directly in the body of the text, or you may quote the translation in the main body
of the text. Regardless, you must provide English translation of all such material either in
parentheses or in foot- or endnotes. Follow the general practice of the best periodicals in your
eld (ask your tutor for help). But remember to be consistent with whatever quotation format
you choose, and to cite whether translations are your own or come from published sources.
• Foreign Words: Foreign words that are not quotations should be underlined or italicized.
• Appendices: An appendix is essentially an expanded footnote. Provide appendices if you
believe that such material helps support your argument. One possible purpose for an appendix
is to supply further but incidental support for an argument developed in the text.
• Notes: Remember that you may use either footnotes (at bottom of page), endnotes (at end of
the thesis), or MLA style parenthetical notes. Use notes properly for the following purposes:
1. to state precisely the source or other authority for a statement in the text, or to acknowledge
indebtedness for insights or arguments taken from other writers;
2. to make minor qualications, to prevent misunderstanding, or otherwise to clarify the text
when such statements, if put in the text, would interrupt the ow;
3. to carry further some topic discussed in the text, when such discussion is needed but does
not t into the text.
• Bibliography: You must append a list of works cited to your thesis. It’s a good idea to compile
your bibliography as you write, rather than try to put it together all at once at the end (there
are very powerful bibliography programs now available, such as Zotero and Endnote, that
generate bibliographies automatically). The purpose of the bibliography is to be a convenience
to the reader. In the works cited list, primary and secondary sources should be listed under
separate headings.
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 29
In considering the 20,000
word limit, remember that
bigger does not equal
better. The best theses
tend to be tight, elegant,
and to the point.
20,000+ Words? Should You Do It?
If you think that your thesis might exceed 20,000 words (without notes), your tutor
will need to consult the Director of Studies on your behalf. Please note that students’
requests to exceed 20,000 words must go through their tutors and that these requests
must be made by mid-February (check the yearly calendar for the specic deadline).
You should not make the decision to go beyond 20,000 words lightly. Your sole
criterion should be that the argument needs words in excess of 20,000 for it to be truly
clear and persuasive. Remember: “bigger” does not necessarily translate into “better.”
The best theses tend to be tight, elegant, and to the point. And even if you do receive
permission to exceed 20,000 words, remember that you can still be penalized if readers
do not think that the excess length is warranted.
Any extension of the thesis beyond 20,000 words must therefore be merited by the
nature of the topic, or sustained excellence in the treatment of the subject, or both. Talk
it over with your tutor and make your decision wisely. If you can bring your thesis under
20,000 words with some good editing, by all means do that instead. Your thesis will only
be stronger for it.
Chapter Four Recap
The revising stage involves developing a productive critical eye. The key to being
productively critical is to think in relative, rather than absolute terms. Continually try to
make your writing and analysis more precise, more clear, and more persuasive.
Start by critiquing your argument. Think about how best to organize your ideas
so that they communicate your argument eectively. And think about how well your
evidence supports your claims.
If you think you might want your thesis to exceed 20,000 words, consider carefully
whether your argument warrants the extra length. The best Hist & Lit theses are tight,
elegant, and to the point. Bigger does not necessarily translate into better.
Last, be creative when you revise. Remember that sometimes revision involves
dramatic rearrangement of your ideas, so don’t be afraid to try new things. And most of
all, don’t forget to enlist regular help from your tutor!
page 30 | Chapter Five: Finishing the Job
chapter ve
Finishing the Job
The last stage of the senior thesis project translates into the nal .2 miles of the 26.2
mile marathon route. It is the nal phase of the race, when the steady stride and
momentum that you’ve worked hard to generate and maintain propels you, once and
for all, through to the end. Over the deafening noise of the crowd cheering you to
the nish line, we simply want to provide you with some words about proofreading,
some guidelines for printing and binding, and some nal thoughts about achieving
closure for your project.
Congratulations! You’re almost there!
Proofreading
All of you have heard plenty of stern words from your professors and tutors about the
necessities of proofreading, so we will spare you more diatribe here. We will simply assert
that proofreading is, in fact, important. And we’ll remind you that you should do your
very best to leave yourself at least a full day or two at the end for it.
Proofreading helps you to present your work in a good light and ensures that your
thesis will make a good rst impression on your readers. Turning in a thesis that you
have not proofread is the equivalent of showing up to an important job interview with
unwashed hair, ratty clothes, and ip-ops.
The goal of proofreading is to make certain that your readers can concentrate fully
on your ideas. You do not want to allow them to be distracted by anything else. Even
the most brilliant ideas can become obscured by typos, incorrect citation styles, and
bad grammar.
If you can, try to enlist a friend to proofread your work for you. You should proofread
your work, too, but you are probably too close to your words to see them with 100%
clarity. Ideally, another pair of eyes will help you to seek out and destroy all of the
annoying and pesky little errors.
Submitting the Final Copies
All students must prepare and submit two, single-sided, complete copies of their senior
thesis by 4:00 pm on the day of the deadline. There will be no extensions of the
senior thesis deadline, regardless of excuse. Students should therefore allow ample
time for any possible problems with computers. Be sure to backup your work daily. And
don’t leave anything to the last minute.
Both copies should be on 8.5" × 11" acid-free, acid-neutral (pH 7.0–8.5), or
“buered” paper (Xerox XXV, Howard Permalife, Hammermill Bond, or Crane’s thesis
paper are suggested by the Harvard Archive, but any kind of acid-free or acid-neutral
paper will do; watermarked paper is ne). Laser printing is preferred, but clear ink-jet
print or Xerox copies on acid-free paper are acceptable.
Both copies should be presented in a black spring binder. A small supply of used
binders is available for purchase in the Hist & Lit main oce. Students in joint
concentrations should submit two copies to Hist & Lit and one copy to the other
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 31
concentration, all on or before the Hist & Lit deadline. Costs for paper, printing, and
binding can run $50 or more, so be sure to budget in advance for it.
Finally, be sure to take note of the following special information.
• Title Page: All theses must include a title page that accords with Harvard’s required format
(see Appendix B for a sample title page).
• Word Count Page: Immediately following the title page, you must insert a separate page
indicating the word count for your thesis (see Appendix B for a sample word count page).
This gure refers only to the text; it does not include footnotes, documents, bibliography, or
appendices.
• Table of Contents: Every thesis requires a Table of Contents to guide the reader.
• Body Format: Margins should be 1½" on the left, 1" on the right, and pages should be
numbered, beginning with the rst page of the introduction. Left justify only; do not full
justify. The lines of type must be double-spaced. Font size for the body text of the thesis should
be 12 pt. Footnotes must be 10, 11, or 12 pt. in the same font as the body text. Times New
Roman font is strongly recommended.
• Acknowledgments: Please do not include acknowledgments in the hard copies that you
initially submit. Outside readers prefer not to know who directed your thesis, lest they be
somehow swayed by that knowledge. If you wish, you may add acknowledgments after your
thesis has been read.
Celebrating the Process and Achieving Closure
The last, but most certainly not least, part of the senior thesis project is to celebrate its
end. On the day that theses are due, Hist & Lit throws a champagne party to celebrate
its seniors’ wondrous accomplishments. Try to attend this party. Use it to take a moment
to reect upon and to celebrate what you have accomplished.
This party is your victory lap — a victory lap that you not only deserve, but owe
to yourself to take. The Hist & Lit senior thesis is a project that will help you to grow
as a scholar and as a human being. It is important to take some time to appreciate and
to commemorate your work, regardless of its nal grade, and to toast yourself and the
process as you move on to your next life adventure!
page 32 | Appendix A: Funding Your Research
Funding Your Research
In the spring of your junior year, you will receive information about funding your
senior thesis research. You certainly do not need to do summer research in order to
write a successful thesis. (Some of our best theses have been started in September.)
However, some students nd it helpful to begin their research over the summer, often in
conjunction with other jobs or internships.
You may be thinking that junior year is too early to apply for a thesis grant since
you have not decided on a thesis topic. This is normal. For the purpose of your grant
applications, you want to be as specic as possible about the primary materials with
which you think you would like to work and the questions that you think you would
like to answer. Grant committees understand that your topic will naturally evolve
between the time that you submit your grant proposal and the time when you actually
carry out your research. So even if you do not know the exact topic that you wish to
study, you can at least work with your tutor in the beginning of the junior spring term
on devising the general subject for your thesis research, on narrowing down possible
source bases, and on identifying library collections that you could use in your research.
This will be a useful exercise for you whether you receive a grant or not.
You can nd Hist & Lit’s Summer Funding Guide on the Hist & Lit website, which
includes a list of thesis research grants that are the most likely matches for concentrators.
It is by no means exhaustive. For more information about funding, consult the Harvard
College Database of Funding and Opportunities for Undergraduates (FOUnd), the
Oce of Career Services, and the Oce of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships.
Note that there are some, albeit more limited, funding opportunities for research during
the fall of the senior year, including the Harvard College Research Program.
Note that deadlines tend to be EARLY in the spring semester (for many, February
and March). You should contact the relevant program to double-check deadline dates
and to inquire about specic application procedures. When it comes time to write your
application, the best person to advise you is your Hist & Lit tutor, since he or she will
be most familiar with the project you are formulating.
If you have further questions about funding, make an appointment with the Associate
Director of Studies. The fellowships tutor in your house can be an additional source of
support. Finally, there are workshops at Harvard in February on writing proposals and
devising budgets that could be helpful to you; you will receive emails announcing these
workshops near the beginning of the spring semester.
appendix
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 33
Sample Documents
For your convenience, we have included a sample title page, sample word count page,
some sample grant proposals, and some sample thesis proposals (without bibliographies).
Please note that the title page and word count page accord with university guidelines
that all students must follow.
The grant and thesis proposals are provided as examples only. They are not meant to
be prescriptive in any way.
appendix
page 34 | Appendix B: Sample Documents
sample title page
“ET TU BRUTE?”: THE IMAGE OF CAESAR IN THE
RENAISSANCE
by
Robert Edwin Smith
Presented to the Committee on Degrees in History &
Literature in Partial Fulllment of the Requirements for the
Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors
Harvard College Cambridge, Massachusetts
March 1, 2011
1.5" margin
1" margin
Font: Times New Roman, 12 pt.
NOT BOLDED! Just regular text.
This format is REQUIRED by the
College. Do not change it, do not
pass go, and do not collect $200.
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 35
sample word count page
Word Count: 17,568
1.5" margin
1" margin
page 36 | Appendix B: Sample Documents
sample grant proposal A
Harvard College Research Program
Research Proposal
Anglo-American Modernism has long intrigued me. My interest was rst piqued in high
school, where I read T.S. Eliot’s poetry in class and Virginia Woolf ’s Mrs. Dalloway at home, and
then cemented during my rst semester at Harvard in my Expository Writing course on Woolf
and Hemingway. Largely because of my interest in these gures, I became a History & Literature
concentrator in the Britain and America eld at the end of my freshman year. Since then, I have
encountered Woolf in English 10b (Major British Writers II) and written a sophomore essay for
History & Literature entitled “‘For all the world to read’: Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf ’s
Orlando.” This year, I have expanded my study beyond Woolf with a junior tutorial focused on
British ction in the Modernist and pre-Modernist periods. In addition to various articles, I
have read such authors as James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Ford Madox Ford, and Henry James. My
tutorial has emphasized British writers because my tutor, Michele Martinez, specializes in British
literature. However, because my eld is Britain and America, I have also engaged American
Modernists outside of tutorial. For example, in History 1666, The World of William James, I
have written one essay on the links between Gertrude Stein’s aesthetic and James’s description
of consciousness, and I am writing a long research paper on the same subject and its implications
for the interest of both Stein and James in painting. I have also sought to understand the place
of Modernism in the history of literature by constructing a schedule of courses this spring that
brackets my tutorial in British Modernism on one side with The World of William James and on
the other with English 169, The Road to Postmodernism.
This longstanding interest in Modernism has culminated this year in my junior paper for
History & Literature, entitled “‘Swagger Sex’: The Politics of the Female Body and Reproduction
in Wyndham Lewis’s Ta r r .” In this essay, I explore the character of Anastasya Vasek in Lewis’s
1918 novel, focusing primarily on her control of her own sexuality, body, and reproduction
and the threat that such autonomy presents for the title character, Frederick Tarr. Tarr remains
caught between Anastasya and another sort of woman represented by Bertha Lunken and Rose
Fawcett, whose children pin him down into forced, boring relationships. I examine the ways in
which Lewis’s biography to some extent lies beneath the development of these characters and
Tarr’s dilemma, trace the additions and revisions that Lewis made to Ta r r over time, and turn
nally to a discussion of Lewis’s attitude toward contraceptives, which he presents as an aid to
feminists in later writings. Ultimately, readers of Lewis might well view contraceptives as an aid
to philandering male artists like Lewis and Tarr and as a partial solution to Tarr’s dilemma.
For my senior thesis in History & Literature next year, I am planning an expansion of my
junior paper, and it is for this project that I am applying for funding from the Harvard College
Research Program. I will extend my examination of body politics to other works by Wyndham
Lewis, particularly his 1937 novel The Revenge for Love. I also hope to undertake a comparison
between the body politics of Lewis’s work and life and the body politics of another Modernist.
Gertrude Stein seems the most likely candidate for this comparison. Both she and Lewis spent
many years in Paris in communities of artistic expatriates, and both possessed a passionate interest
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 37
in visual art; Lewis was a leading avant-garde painter as well as a writer, and Stein was an
important collector and critic of art and a friend to artists such as Matisse and Picasso.
Lewis and Stein even met once, in 1913 in Paris, and wrote about each other with marked
vehemence. Indeed, Stein’s American- and woman-centered life and work serve as an
excellent contrast to Lewis’s marked British masculinity. In my thesis, I would examine
these connections and contrasts and focus on the body politics of both artists, particularly in
relation to the representation of the female body and reproduction in their work. I would
also investigate the responses of Lewis and Stein to the changing patterns of reproduction
in the inter-war period, when fertility rates fell sharply and birth control became a political
issue in Britain and United States for the rst time.
In this project, I hope to be advised by Michele Martinez, a member of the
Committee on Degrees in History & Literature and the Department of English and
American Literature and Language. She has worked with me this year as my junior tutor,
and her familiarity with feminist and other theories about the female body and the
work of Wynham Lewis certainly qualify her to advise my thesis. However, because she
specializes in British literature, any extension of my project to include Gertrude Stein
would require me to seek some outside advice from a scholar of American literature.
I plan to undertake the research for my thesis during the summer at the Robert
W. Woodru Library at Emory University in Atlanta, GA, my home city. Since I must
remain at Harvard for three weeks to fulll my commitment to the Harvard University
Student Porter Program, I will not be able to begin my research until July. Once I begin,
however, I plan to research my thesis in lieu of nding employment, and I have applied for
a stipend to support my work. I will spend the months of July and August at Emory, using
their collections to read texts by Lewis and Stein and to research the cultural conceptions
of the female body and reproduction that surrounded them and the ways in which these
notions were changing at the time. At the end of the summer, I plan to travel for two or
three days to the Carl A. Kroch Library at Cornell University and examine the papers of
Wyndham Lewis in the Rare and Manuscripts Collections there. As a less frequently studied
Modernist, his letters have not drawn the attention that Stein’s papers have, and they are less
readily available in collected form.
In order to support this project, I have applied for a stipend because research
for my thesis will take the place of a job during July and August. I have also requested
reimbursement for the expenses I will incur at the Woodru Library, where I will be unable
to take books out of the library and will need to photocopy all source material. Finally, I
have requested reimbursement for transportation, lodging, and food during my brief trip to
Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, at the end of August.
sample grant proposal A (cont.)
page 38 | Appendix B: Sample Documents
sample grant proposal B
Thesis Research Proposal for “Anti-Colonial Protest in Literature: Moroccan Theatre in
the French Protectorate”
Most scholars agree that Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 catalyzed modern-
ization in the Arab world through contact with the West. During a decline that had lasted
several centuries, Arab literature had also stagnated, but the arrival of the printing press
from Europe along with the inuence of European writers provided Egyptians with new
ideas and possibilities. Soon, Arabs had appropriated and experimented with the tradition-
ally Western literary forms of the short story, the novel, and theatre.
1
While many scholars have studied the West’s inuence on Egyptian, Levantine, and
Iraqi literature of the 19th century, a much later Franco-Arab encounter has remained
largely ignored. In 1912, Morocco was the last African country to be colonized. Although
Moroccans had contact with the West before Spain and France divided their country
into regions of separate European control, it is interesting to note that the rst theatre
in Morocco did not open until 1913. Furthermore, it seems that no Moroccan wrote
Arabic-language drama until the early 1920s. Thereafter, two forms of theatre apparently
became widely popular: plays by the French writer Molière (translated into Arabic), and
anti- colonial drama performed in the Moroccan dialect of Arabic.
2
Within this story lays a central paradox and many questions that I hope to answer.
A combination of historical and literary methods may explain the eect of European
inuence on Moroccan literature as well as Moroccan strategies for struggling against
colonialism. How and why did Moroccans adopt (and therefore accept) a European
literary form to protest European politics? Why didn’t theatre exist until the 1920s and
then suddenly become widely popular? Why did writers use theatre to ght French
and Spanish colonialism instead of other literary forms, or how did their use of theatre
dier? How did European or other Arab literature inuence Moroccan writing? How did
Moroccan theatre aect the anti-colonial movement and the colonial powers, if at all?
While research has oered answers to similar questions for dierent parts of the
world and other types of literature (my bibliography mentions examples of works on anti-
colonial poetry and drama from the Arab east, especially Egypt), little has been published
that addresses this phenomenon in Morocco; moreover, the few works I have found lack
a theoretical background, revealing close readings, or a synthesis of the evidence into
conclusions that further our understanding of the cultural eects of political/military
encounters on the one hand, and about methods of resisting colonialism on the other.
Several barriers may have prevented scholars from researching this subject — a thorough
study requires knowledge of the languages spoken in Morocco, for instance, to ensure
1
For an example of this widely accepted point of view, see M. M. Badawi, ed. The
Cambridge History of Arabic Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
2
Abdelwahed Ouzri. Le Théâtre au Maroc: Structures et Tendances. Casablanca: Les Editions
Toubkal, 1997.
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 39
access to primary and secondary sources (Moroccan Arabic, Standard Arabic, French, and
Spanish are necessary, all of which I know). Furthermore, many of the sources — including
theatrical pieces that were never published and recordings of the performances, in addition
to the writers, dramaturges, and actors — are only available in Morocco.
This summer, I hope to travel to Casablanca, Rabat, Fès, and other parts of
Morocco to work with these sources. Through archival research, I will search for the texts
of plays unavailable in the United States and secondary sources on those plays. In stores
as well as archives, I will look for recordings of plays that were shown on TV. Finally, I
will meet with Moroccans researching similar subjects (I have already found a graduate
student in Fès who said he would tell me about the dissertation he is writing on Moroccan
theatre if I came to see him) and interview primary sources, too. I will almost certainly
be in Casablanca for an eight-week internship and will start my thesis research then since,
in addition to having Casablanca’s resources available, I will be able to make day-trips to
Rabat (the national archives are open on days I will most likely have free from work) and
contact my human sources by phone. I would like to devote at least three weeks after my
internship solely to thesis research, however, so that I can continue working in the archives
in Rabat and elsewhere, in addition to conducting interviews in other parts of the country.
After spending this spring preparing for my summer research, I will arrive in
Morocco with the tools, plans, and knowledge necessary to make the most of my time
there. I am already delving into preliminary research with Professor William Granara, my
tutor for my one-on-one Near Eastern Languages junior tutorial and Harvard’s leading
academic of North African literature. He will probably become my faculty adviser for
my thesis and continue working with me on this topic throughout next year, but, at the
moment, he is helping me explore the subject of anti-colonial poetry from the Arab
east and helping me nd lesser-known materials touching on this theme in the context
of Moroccan theatre. Furthermore, since the research topic I have chosen is considered
cutting-edge in my eld, I am lucky to have found many other instructors so interested
in my work that they have already oered their resources, including my History &
Literature junior tutorial leader Zahr Stauer (who is especially helpful at working through
frustrating moments of long-term projects with me, as well as directing my attention to
productive questions), a graduate student in Near Eastern Languages applying to work
for the History & Literature department, Jonathan Smolin (he is writing his dissertation
on Moroccan theatre and has already provided me with a list of useful references
and information about conducting research in Morocco), and Susan Slyomovics, an
anthropology professor at MIT for whom I worked freshman year and who will put me in
touch with her contacts in Morocco.
Thank you for considering to provide the funds necessary to make this project
possible.
sample grant proposal B (cont.)
page 40 | Appendix B: Sample Documents
sample thesis proposal A
Name: Field in History & Literature: European Studies Tutor: Thesis Topic or Title: Issues of
Gender in Travel Literature: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters
In 1716 Edward Wortley Montagu was appointed Ambassador to Turkey, a position that involved
travel through Europe to Constantinople, the epitome of the exotic and unknown. While Edward’s
diplomatic negotiations took place in Sultan Ahmed III’s palace, his wife, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
caught a glimpse of an even more forbidden world, exoticised in accounts by European travelers and
fantasized about by the literate European public—the seraglio. She kept a diary based on her experiences
there, which she later transformed into a collection of ‘letters’ written to family, friends, admirers, literary
men, and her husband. Although she published numerous works upon her return to England—many
of which extolled the intellectual capacities of women, disparaged their current societal position and
responded to male authors’ chauvinism—The Turkish Embassy Letters (1763) were not published until a
year after Lady Mary’s death. In her lifetime, the manuscript circled among a small circle of friends, the
most noteworthy of whom was Mary Astell, an English proto-feminist writer who wrote the a short
introduction to the Letters in 1724.
In this thesis, I will examine Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters as an
indirect critique of the condition of women in Enlightenment England. I will specically focus on the
descriptions of the women in the harem and Lady Mary’s relationship with them, keeping four main
backdrops in mind: the genre of the epistolary novel, the oriental tale and orientalism, the epistolary
correspondence between Montagu and her circle of condants, and the pamphlets on women’s conduct
and position in early eighteenth-century England. Generally, I will ask: what did TEL mean to its few
English readers before 1750 and what would it have meant to a wider English readership?
Lady Mary works hard to debunk prevailing stereotypes about the harem and the Near East. In
so doing, she makes common cause with writers of the same period (Montesquieu, Johnson, Voltaire),
who both take advantage of the newfound popularity of the Oriental tale and undercut its exoticism. Of
particular interest in this connection is Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1721), which gives to the epistolary
novel an orientalist tinge to accomplish a social critique (of France) as well. By tracing the reception of
these oriental tales in England, I hope to set Lady Mary’s work in relation to widespread public interest in
the Near East.
The epistolary character of Lady Mary’s work necessitates an examination of the conventions of
letter-writing in the period. Secondary essays will help me assess whether style was associated strongly
with gender (female or male) or with a topic (travel writing or politics).
A signicant focus of my investigation will comprise Lady Mary’s circle(s) of acquaintance
and the travels of her manuscript within these circles. Lady Mary was close with both Mary Astell, the
champion of women’s learning and critic of the institution of marriage, and Alexander Pope, the famed
Catholic poet. She also participated in London Coeehouse society (Kit-Kat Club). I will continue to
trace the circles of readers of the manuscript after Lady Mary’s death up until the publication(s) of TEL.
Finally, Lady Mary’s social critique in her portrait of the harem must be examined in relation
to the larger debates over the proper role and position of women in English society. Primarily examined
through Astell’s and Lady Mary’s publications, correspondences between Lady Mary, Astell and Pope,
and secondary literature, I will characterize the “proto-feminist” movement of the time, evaluating its
coherence, composition, tenets
and activity.
As a whole, this thesis will weave together themes of gender, travel and social commentary to
argue the signicance of The Turkish Embassy Letters in eighteenth-century England and to capture the
interplay between culture(s) and text(s).
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 41
sample thesis proposal B
Name: Field: American Studies Tutor: Thesis
Prospectus: Queer on the Frontier: Cultural Representations of the Gay Cowboy in Art & Cinema
“It is an assault on children because it is sending them the message that homosexuality is an acceptable,
normal lifestyle. It is also a perversion of Westerns. All Western heroes have been portrayed as straight shooters — and
that just doesn’t mean hitting a target with a gun. It’s a matter of character.” - Robert Knight, director of Concerned
Women for America’s Culture and Family Institute, commenting on Marvel Comics’ gay cowboy series The Rawhide
Kid in 2002.
Robert Knight’s comments reect the cowboy gure’s status as a paragon of idealized American
masculinity. Dened as a rugged hero and a self-made man, the cowboy sits at the center of a mythical
frontier West that enchants the imagination of Hollywood and society. Yet as Annie Proulx’s recent short
story “Brokeback Mountain” (1997) demonstrates, even that archetypal image of manhood can be recast
in a manner that jeopardizes the cowboy’s standing in a testosterone driven, heterosexual culture. This
thesis seeks to chronicle late 20th century representations of the cowboy that oer an ambiguous or
subversive portrayal of his sexuality.
Though the thesis will focus on the post-Stonewall era, it will begin by asking: how queer
was the nineteenth-century frontier? Scholars have already attempted to draw out latent homo-erotic
undertones in nineteenth-century representations of cowboys by examining the work of Frederic
Remington and other iconic Western artists. This thesis breaks new ground by moving to examine
20th-century representations of cowboys, beginning with the Western genre lms of the post-war era
including Howard Hawks’s Red River (1948), The Left-Handed Gun (1958, based on Gore Vidal’s teleplay),
and Andy Warhol’s Lonesome Cowboys (1968). This brief section of the thesis will work to demonstrate that
the image of the cowboy was charged with homo-eroticism even prior to the more public expressions of
gay identity that developed after 1969.
More important to the focus of the thesis, however, is an examination of how explicitly queer
representations of the cowboy are being deployed by gay communities and artists following the riots on
Christopher St. Important questions include: How did gay culture appropriate, subvert, and challenge the
myth of the cowboy, and to what ends? Were certain subsets of gay culture intent on dening themselves
in opposition to traditionally eete stereotypes of homosexuality? Were some images of the gay cowboy
focused instead on tarnishing and undermining the poster-boy gure of aggressive masculinity that
represented the oppression and hostility of the heterosexual male majority? Are images of queer cowboys
driven by a fetishization of a cultural and physical ideal, and if so, what are the implications for gays’
conceptions of themselves? What is the signicance of placing images of gay identity within the aesthetic
history of the Western frontier? Little scholarship has been devoted to these questions, and this thesis
hopes to address this gap in the critical literature.
In examining these questions, the thesis will look to primary sources of gay stories, cartoons,
and erotica published in the gay press during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Another primary source is the art
of Delmas Howe, which oers a particularly interesting oeuvre relevant to this subject; his series of large
homo-erotic paintings, Rodeo Pantheon, depicts classical characters such as Hercules or Theseus but dresses
them up as cowboys and places them against a Western frontier background. Since little has been written
on Howe, his paintings provide an important source of fresh primary source material related to the thesis’s
focus. If time and resources permit, the thesis will include an oral history section devoted to interviews
with real-life gay cowboys that would be obtained during a trip to the nal round of the International
Gay Rodeo competition that takes place in Dallas next month.
The thesis will end by moving beyond the gay community to look at more mainstream
representations of cowboys, including John Schlessinger’s 1969 classic Midnight Cowboy, Ang Lee’s
upcoming lm adaptation of Proulx’s story, and a gay cowboy comic book character named The Rawhide
Kid that Marvel introduced in 2002 to the public consternation of family conservatives. An analysis of
these works combined with the critical reception that they received in the mainstream press will allow an
examination of the various heterosexual responses to subversive cowboys, and will highlight the anxieties
that surround queer appropriation of traditionally macho subjects. The thesis will reect on the question
from a historical perspective, examining how the signicance of subversive cowboys diers across cultural
moments, for surely the circumstances surrounding Midnight Cowboy in 1969 dier from the current social
climate that will receive Lee’s version of Brokeback Mountain. Drawing on queer theory, lm theory, and
art analysis, the thesis will apply a “myth and symbol” methodology to examine just how “straight” is the
“straight-shooter” gure that Knight invokes as an iconic American myth.
page 42 | Chapter One:
Staying Healthy
Bureau of Study Counsel Writing Groups
From the BSC website (bsc.harvard.edu):
The Bureau of Study Counsel is a resource center for students’ academic and personal
development. The Bureau encourages the development of the “whole person” in the
interrelated realms of intellectual, emotional, and interpersonal life. Students consult the
Bureau with a wide variety of academic and personal concerns, and the Bureau sta
welcomes any topic for discussion. Services include:
• academic and personal counseling
• groups and workshops
• Harvard Course in Reading and Study Strategies
• peer tutoring (course-based or English as a Second Language)
• supervision of peer counseling and peer education groups
• consultation and outreach
• referral to other services or providers, either within or outside the Harvard community
The undergraduate and graduate student years are times of intense growth and
development — intellectually, emotionally, and interpersonally. During these years,
students will form an adult identity, develop their capacities for critical and creative
thinking, and explore such aspects of their lives as relationships, sexuality, health choices,
and career direction. While being a student can be stimulating, it can also be stressful.
Students may encounter academic, emotional, and relationship diculties that test
the limits of their current coping strategies. The Bureau can help students claim their
existing strengths and develop new ones in their eorts to live a life that feels true to the
whole of who they are.
At the Bureau, students can expect to nd responsive people — counselors, mentors,
advisors, facilitators, and other students — who can help them feel less alone with
their experience and better able to face the academic and personal challenges of being
a Harvard student. The Bureau is here to help students enhance their engagement in
their learning, improve their scholastic performance, trust their emotions, enjoy their
relationships, and deepen their connection to their sense of self and to what really
matters to them in life.
UHS Resources
From the UHS Mental Health Services website
(huhs.harvard.edu/services/counseling-and-mental-health):
Counseling and mental health sta are available to assist with a variety of concerns,
including academic issues, relationship conicts, problems with alcohol use, unwanted
sexual contact, and depression or anxiety. Our sta consists of both male and female
page 42 | Appendix C: Staying Healthy
appendix
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 43
professionals who are trained and experienced in dealing with issues specic to university
students. Many have special interests in areas such as eating concerns, academic concerns,
relationship issues, alcohol and other drugs, and chronic illnesses.
We encourage you to schedule an appointment with one of our sta members
to discuss personal concerns and to develop new ways of resolving issues. Available
services include individual, couple, family, or group meetings, depending on your
needs. A variety of counseling and support groups specically designed for students
are oered each year.
page 44 | Chapter One:
DO be an active researcher.
To conduct research eciently, you will need to
concentrate on being active, and never passive. Being
an active researcher does not mean only that you are
“alert” while reading, with pen and paper always at the
ready. It means that you should constantly be engaging
your source material head-on — interrogating it with
your research question and pulling out any answers that
it might yield. You should be acting upon your sources,
rather than just allowing them to act upon you. Keeping
your research question rmly in mind is the key. The main
reason that students grow passive when researching is
that they lose sight of the question that they are asking.
Without the question in mind, it’s impossible to know
what, exactly, is important in the sources. The result
is either that students try to note everything down or
(more common) that they note nothing at all. Recite
your research question like a mantra in your head and
follow where it leads. Write it on a note card or a post-
it and attach it to your computer. Write it on the back
of your hand if you must. Just do whatever you can to
keep it at the forefront of your mind. If you do that, you
will always be active as you research.
DO be brutally honest with your tutor.
The senior tutorial is no time for being coy, and it’s no
time for putting on a show of strength and understanding
when you have none. Be as condently and stridently
honest about your work and your progress as you
possibly can, as soon as you possibly can, and as often
as you possibly can with your tutor. Tell your tutor
every time you see her or him precisely where you are
in the process and how you are feeling about it. Your
tutor may exhibit seemingly magical powers of wisdom
and insight, but no tutor can read your mind. If you
hide the fact that you’re struggling, or procrastinating,
or whatever, your tutor can’t help you. And what your
tutor wants more than anything is to help you. Your
tutor can help you best when she or he know what you
need. And to know, you’ve got to give up the info.
DO sleep, eat, and exercise.
This should probably be number one on this list, because
it is perhaps the most important. Because the senior
thesis is a marathon and not a sprint, if you don’t pace
yourself and take care of yourself along the way, you
quite honestly will have a very dicult time making it
to the end. Physical and mental wellness through the
long months of your thesis project starts with the basics,
and it has to start right now. There is no time to waste.
Get into a healthy routine. Maybe choose to go out one
fewer night each week (or at least, not quite as late) so
you can keep up with your sleep. Go for the salad bar
instead of the fries at least once a day, every day. Finally
make good on those Harvard gym privileges. Or start
that yoga class. Whatever. Just take care of yourself! You
will thank yourself in February (and for the rest of your
life as you realize that starting up those habits now
will keep you young). Oh, and by the way, taking care
of yourself also means allowing yourself to put your
thesis aside and to have fun every once in a while, too.
Working all the time isn’t healthy, either.
Good Habits to Develop Early
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature | page 45
DON’T make it your goal to write an award-
winning essay.
Over-achievement is something that has been ingrained in
many of us at Harvard from the very beginning: we are a
community of perfectionists. If you are one of the many,
we’re not even going to try to suggest that you eliminate
your perfectionist impulses from your brain (that would be
a pipe dream). What we will do, however, is strongly urge
you to set some smaller goals for yourself rst, and right
away. Start by making Goal #1 a well-designed research
question. Make Goal #2 a complete rough draft. And
make Goal #3 a strong nal draft: one that asks a
strong, well-conceived research question; that makes
a precise, clear, and persuasive analytical argument;
and that has a clear beginning, middle, and end. Once
you have a strong nal draft, then you can make Goal
#4 to polish it into award-winning shape. Every Hist
& Lit student is capable of truly amazing work. And
we mean every single student. So the best theses are
not a reection of some innate mystical capacity that
certain students have and most don’t. The best theses
are almost always (99% of the time) the ones that start
eciently and stay ecient from beginning to end. If
you make it your goal to be ecient and organized,
not to skip steps, and to work that way throughout
the entire course of your project, we can pretty much
guarantee that success will follow.
DON’T shut yourself out from the rest of the world.
This goes partly with the good habit of talking to your
tutor and allowing yourself some healthy fun from time
to time. But it also means that you need to remember
that your senior thesis is only one aspect of your life,
not your entire life. The best theses, once again, are
almost never the ones that are all-consuming in a given
student’s life. Shutting yourself out from the rest of the
world, thinking that it will help you to “be serious,”
actually will cause you to lose perspective, which
does not make for good analytical work. Keep your
perspective. Stay integrated with the rest of your life.
DON’T think of your senior thesis as a reection
of you.
Ready? Everyone repeat: “I am not my thesis. My thesis
is not me.” This should be a mantra running through
your head each day, every day, for the next year. No one
(and we mean no one) will think less of you — or more
of you — based on the results of your thesis.
Bad Habits to Break Right Away
Committee on Degrees
in History & Literature
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Harvard University
H
&
L
Committee on Degrees in History & Literature
Barker Center 122
Cambridge, MA 02138
https://histlit.fas.harvard.edu/
Phone: (617) 495-4029
Fax: (617) 496-5605
