Prospectus

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LUCAS Writing Seminar

Course
2019-2020

Admission requirements

Students have finished a Ba in a form of Literary Studies or Art History, and they have been admitted to the LUCAS Research Master Literary Studies or Arts and Culture.

Description

This seminar will train students in:

  • Presenting their work in front of a scientific panel or for an international (conference) audience, both in the form of a presentation and in the form of a conference poster

  • Writing an article that has a fair chance of being accepted by a graduate journal.

  • Thinking about funding opportunities for research and ways to translate their ideas into a grant proposal

In the first part we mimic a scholarly conference, with students going through every stage, from initial abstract to final presentation. Students prepare an abstract, judge each other’s work, practice presenting their papers, moderating thematic sessions etc. To get the most out of this seminar it is helpful if students already have an idea of the subject(s) they want to work on. This can be their thesis subject, but they can also choose another topic they want to pursue after graduating the ResMa.

In the second part we train writing and re-writing an article that has a fair chance of being accepted by a graduate journal. In general students write papers, get comments and move on. In this part all feed-back is used to really re-write your text, and re-write it again. We will be mimicking peer-review here and working with an editorial board.

As an epilogue to the course, students are invited to think about ways to obtain funding for their research. They get acquainted with various types of funding bodies and their requirements, and explore the ways in which they could formulate their research ideas into a fundable grant application.

Students close the course with the presentation of a conference poster, presenting either the content of their articles, or a future research project they would like to pitch to a funding body. The medium of the poster challenges them to boil down their nuanced and wrought-out scientific articles, or their ambitious research projects, to their naked essence.

Course objectives

After this course students:

  • Have trained their abilities to present and pitch their work to an interdisciplinary and international audience;

  • Have trained their abilities to work on, and rework versions of an article;

  • Have experience with the functioning and force of peer-review systems;

  • Have an increased awareness of the working of funding bodies and the requirements (in terms of form and content) of a grant application in the field of the humanities and social sciences;

  • Have acquired a number of transferable skills: doing a presentation, developing projects in cooperation, the ability to address an audience unfamiliar with a topic, act as chair or respondent, make a conference poster etc.

Timetable

See Timetable

Mode of instruction

Seminar
Research.

Course Load

Total course load 10 EC x 28 hours= 280 hours

  • Classes: 12 x 2 = 24

  • Preparation classes: 12 x 4 = 48

  • Working on a presentation: 55

  • Exploring funding options: 15

  • Writing an article: 75

  • Making a conference poster: 20

  • Peer assessment: 33

  • Assembling a portfolio: 10

Assessment method

Students will be:

  • Preparing and doing an oral and poster presentation (30%).

  • Writing an article (50%)

  • Keeping a portfolio of their activities, including peer reviews (20%)

Only the article can be part of a resit.

Presentations are discussed in class; the grade for and content of the application and the article are part of an evaluation within three weeks after handing in the material.

Weighing

The final grade for the course is established by determining the weighted average.

Blackboard

Blackboard will be used for:

Announcement of the reading list.

Reading list

To be announced.

Registration

Via uSis is mandatory.

Registration Studeren à la carte and Contractonderwijs

Not applicable.

Contact

Prof.dr. S. Lammes

For other questions contact the student administration

Remarks

None.