Your Exploratory Plan will present key research questions along with the disharmonies you have noticed, which your questions will bring you to deal with. You also will share what steps you will take to pursue these questions (what you will be examining and how you will be examining those items). You will ultimately speculate on what impact your research might have for you and the communities you belong to (or wish to belong to).
The plan will be at least 900 words (4+ pages double spaced).
Together with the Vision/Mission Statement, the Exploratory Plan will serve as an early draft (a "hint") of your future Prospectus which will be written at the end of the semester.
In this document, you are to present:
The possibility you are inventing yourself to be (perhaps revised from the vision/mission assignment, especially in light of class discussion);
The most pressing disharmonies you have been dealing with or that you are beginning to notice and deal with and how your inventory limits you in dealing with these disharmonies;
One or several central research questions that may guide you to discover what you will research--these questions will be given by (emerge from) the disharmonies you are dealing with;
One or more networks of controlling topics your research question(s) derive from, and/or are in conflict with;
You will need to argue for how your plan will help you accomplish this push to explore beyond your current inventory, extending you out into new territory and into areas you do not already know or have mastery in;
A list of likely items of research. Along with each item on your list (which may change throughout the semester), provide a brief explanation for why the item is on your list--based on your limited grasp of your new items (at least 5) and your deeper grasp of those items you have already researched (at least 2);
You are to speculate on what impact your research might make for others in a given community (that is: What history-making practices might you explore and what would enacting such practices look like for you?).
What you will be researching first (which work from your list, author and title, and why).
Crucial to this plan is articulating your already given understanding of your project and of research that you distinguished in your inventory and the limits you have encountered.
Keep in mind that you have been introduced to a number of methodological approaches to doing your research, chief of which is distinguishing networks of controlling topics.
Distinguishing networks of controlling topics requires you to distinguish and share:
the premise, controlling idea and counter idea of a text, artifact, or experience (the dominant controlling topic--instrument/realm);
surprising details (disharmonies) from perspectives (controlling topics) other than the one represented in the text, artifact, or experience;
the power dynamics between narrators and audiences;
the history making practices at work in a given text, artifact, experience and the disharmony that triggers these practices to make history within a given community.
Consequently, your plan ought to push you to explore beyond the limits of your current inventory, extending you out into new territory and into areas you do not already know or have mastery in. You will need to argue for how your plan will help you accomplish this push to explore beyond your current inventory.
Toward this end, you will provide a preliminary list of of at least 7 texts, artifacts, and experiences.
At least 2 will be already researched items, that is, past explorations of your research questions (even if this is only recognized in retrospect). These 2 may include assigned readings for this course (from Stage One), but only if you are taking a deeper dive into them for the purpose of your research.
In order to write this exploratory plan, you must also engage in new research this semester to locate and then list at least 5 significant items you are proposing to dwell in, interact with, study, and write about during this semester.
These 5 sources must represent a variety of significant items of research: academic books, academic journal articles, novels, films, craft books, etc. You may list more than five, though you will likely not get beyond five during the course of the semester unless you are especially industrious.
You may include ephemeral items beyond these 5 new sources. Ephemeral items include blogs, newspaper or magazine articles, interviews, narratives, etc. When in doubt ask me.
Note: these selections you are making now may change throughout the semester as your own trajectory shifts, but anything you research may be counted. For the Annotated Bibliography, you will ultimately will have at least 7 sources (at least 2 already researched and 5 newly researched).