COMM 460
Fall 2014

Assignments and Examinations

Weight

Examinations

Speech Abstracts

Undergraduate Unit Project

"Beyond the Classroom" Experiences

Graduate Paper

Late Papers and Incompletes

Academic Integrity

Disabilities and Religious Holidays

Home Page

Graduate Paper

Write a paper that tells us something about the character of public orality in an American community.

Option 1: Locate a diary or journal that reports public life in an American community from the time period covered in this course. Write an essay describing the public life the diarist or journalist experiences.

Option 2: Select an American locality and a particular time during the period covered by this course. Using primary and/or secondary sources, write an essay that describes public life in that community.

Option 3: Focus on a particular aspect of the place of speaking in American communities. Of course, you will have to make certain that the question you are asking is significant. Some examples of research questions might be: What was the relationship between speaking on the frontier and on the tidewater in pre-Revolutionary Virginia? What were the differences between the style of the Senate and the style of the stump during the era of the Silver Orators? What characteristics of reformism in their time did the early speakers from the women's movement shape into their discourse? Feel free to bounce other ideas off me.

Option 4: The Center for Political Communication and Civic Leadership in the department is participating in the Voices of Democracy project. You may fulfill the graduate assignment by selecting a speech acceptable to Professor Parry-Giles and developing the necessary material for the website posting. The material will be submitted to me for evaluation if you choose this option.

Papers for the first three options should be 2500 to 3000 words (ten to twelve pages of 12 point type). Please indicate word count with author identification. Projects are due December 1. 20 percent of grade. Projects will be evaluated based on: (1) the quality of the insight contained in the project, (2) the quality of research, (3) the quality of the writing or site preparation, and (4) the following of proper form. MLA or APA form will be accepted. This might also be an excellent time to use some of the archives in the Washington area, although that is not necessarily a requirement for the project.