Most senior exercises are theses. Most theses are empirical investigations or explorations. Some theses will involve data already available in published or unpublished data sets, information derived from written materials or other media, or various combinations of these. But in most cases, a student will engage her or himself in the first hand acquisition of data.
Consider the thesis to be more than a term paper for a class. Pomona regulations require that if a student has done related work for a course, the material included in the thesis must be "substantially unique" and not simply duplicate work for which the student already received credit in a course. In short, the thesis may not simply restate research done for a course, although it may incorporate some such work.
A thesis is your original work while it is also a work which is related to ongoing discussions in the discipline. It might in happy circumstances build on the work of others so as to be a solid contribution to the discipline.
1. You will want to choose a subject of interest to you.
2. You will have to have resources that are at hand and rich enough to enable completion.
3. You will want to have background knowledge in the subject matter.
A typical problem is narrowing down from your larger interests to a workable project given time and other constraints. You might think of yourself as working on two tracks: One concerns your larger interests, the other the specific project that will be the thesis. Keep both in mind, but of course you will focus your main efforts on the thesis work.
The work involves analysis of some relatively rich set of empirical materials by means of, or in terms of, a body of theoretical ideas. Sometimes the work is a systematic testing of hypotheses derived from the theoretical work; sometimes the work is more of an interactive building of theory in light of data while simultaneously examining data in the light of emerging theoretical constructs. Whatever the nature of the interaction between information and theory, analytical work is central.
Four key words in the above paragraph are empirical, theory (and theoretical), analysis, and critical. In referring to anthropological investigations as empirical, we mean of course that they make direct or indirect reference to concretely situated natural worlds of human lifeways, experiences, or conditions. This does not mean that we ask for narrowly empiricist reckonings of these natural worlds. We have in mind richly theoretically textured investigations and explorations and well as richly empirical ones.
By theory is meant a significant body of ideas that help orient and guide an investigation (and the revision of which might be one of the results of the investigation). Theory is of its nature relatively general and it is substantive. By saying theory is general, one is saying that it helps or allows one's investigation to have a point and a purpose beyond just rearranging some facts. This does not mean that theory has to be fully universal, just that there must be some room for the investigator to negotiate the empirical materials at hand and try to explicate whatever processes, mechanisms or other connections such as are relevant to understanding them. In doing this, one wants to say that something has been explained, or at least well explicated analytically.
By analysis (see the Appendix) is meant negotiations among ideas and sets of information that bring order to the investigation, that further the point and purpose of the investigation, and that put one in a position of specifying some result, such as "findings," or a "confirmation" (or "disconfirmation") of a theory, or conclusions concerning what certain patterns of human thought or action mean.
Anthropological investigations involve critical thinking from start to finish. One is critical of one’s sources in the literature; one is also critical of theoretical ideas and of construals of bodies of information; one is also critically aware of one’s sources of empirical data and relevant issues of measurement error and bias. The kind of "critical" involved here is sometimes close to literary criticism in that one is doing close reading, paying close attention to concept meanings, and collating and comparing different sources for fit or lack of fit; at the same time, as in literary work, one is appreciative and respectful of one's sources of information and of the information itself, without taking it for granted. One's purpose after all is to deepen our understandings of human lives and lifeways. That requires investigations that don't take for granted what they need to question or let sloppy formulations slip by, other peoples or one's own.
Critical of course does not mean a crippling hyper-skeptical stance of mere fault finding.
A thesis must have (at least) two readers. At least one reader must be a member of the Anthropology Department at Pomona College. Your readers should be comfortable with your subject matter and your approach to it. Note well that it is important to keep your readers informed of your work on a frequent and regular basis so that there are no surprises and so that you can make use of their advice. You and your readers may wish to work out a schedule of regular consultations.
In some cases thesis you may need to apply for approval of your research protocol to the Human Subjects Committee. If that is the case, then the application needs to be submitted fairly early, two-thirds of the way through Fall semester would would not be toolate, while the end of Fall semester is beginning to be pretty late to be taking that important step. These applications take two-to-three weeks to turn around and you can’t start working with or even recruiting subjects until you get permission. Your advisor will help you determine whether approval is necessary.
You should enter the Fall term of your senior year prepared to work on the thesis. The department in the prior Spring term should have approved a statement of purpose and approach; the early statement will include some preliminary literature and bibliography. In the Fall term the task is to work up your literature review and its accompanying bibliography more fully. The literature review will result in changes in what you are doing, at the very least in filling out the work, perhaps more substantially in how you conceptualize the nature of the work. Accordingly, you will want to revise the statement of purpose and make sure your reader(s) approves it.
Turn in a rough draft of the literature review and methods section, along with a revised statement of purpose, by the last day of classes in the Fall semester; the Fall semester grade will be based in large part on those items, along with a human subjects application, if necessary.
1. Revised literature review, bibliography, statement of purpose, and outline by the end of February 2. Rough draft, due six weeks before the last day of classes 3. Final draft, due two weeks before the last day of classes
Among your initial steps you will want to convince your reader(s) (and yourself) that you are setting out on a worthy exploration and that you know what you are doing. One way to achieve this goal is to make sure you have mastered the relevant writings on your topic, theoretical and substantive. The process of doing a review of the relevant literature is more than just reading items and grasping their main points. It involves constructing a coherent story or picture of where our understandings are on your topic and how they have been developing over time; which understandings are weak and which strong; in what directions the literature seems to be going; how your work is going to relate to the on-going work. You might look in Annual Reviews in Anthropology both for articles in your area of work and also for ways to construct reviews of the literature.
As you review the literature, you will also be giving thought to how you will accomplish your study. In some cases, considerable attention will need to be given to the methods one uses and how one uses them. In all cases attention will need to be given to the sensitivity of one’s approach to one's theoretical frame of reference, the types of inferences one is aiming for, and also the people that will be involved in the study, whether as subjects or consultants.
You will be expected to hand in a rough draft about two thirds of the way through the process. You might have been handing in chapters or sections earlier, if you and your reader(s) agree to do the work that way. One important point is that "rough draft" does not mean "notes" that you eventually plan to wriite up or a "sloppy" or "poorly written" draft. The rough draft is a quite close approximation to the final thesis. You will want your reader(s) to read it for content, for the cogency of your arguments, the validity of your logic, the fit of data and theory, and such like. The best way to help your reader get to the content is for the draft to be impeccably cleanly constructed in terms of writing and style. Spell check it carefully; make sure your word choices are right, that your organization is tight. In other words, treat the rough draft very much like what it is, the penultimate draft, where you are putting your best foot forward in order, one hopes, to prevent flaws from not being noticed by your readers after it is too late to do whatever work is needed to make repairs. It is the students primary responsibility to make sure about such matters.
You will present a copy of the rough draft to each of your readers (it will be up to them to determine if they wish to read paper, or an Acrobat or Word file; if in doubt, provide them with paper, but better, arrange in advance to meet their needs, and do make sure the work is in double space, unless instructed otherwise, so that your readers may more readily write or type in the neighborhood of where they have found matters that they want to bring to your attention. In normal circumstances, each reader will provide the reader who is agreed to be the main reader with not only a letter grade but also whether the senior exercise merits (1) pass, (2) pass with distinction, or (3) failure. If there serious discrepancies arise among readers, they will need to confer on the result. See also the style guide and the form sheet for senior theses.
(edited entry from the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary)
LC16. [med.L f. Gk analusis, f. analuein unloose, f. as ana- + luein loosen.]
(top)
Working with your professor(s)
Human subjects approval
Timetable
Final Fall semester due date
Three important Spring semester due dates
Literature Review
Methods/Approach
Rough draft
Appendix