This guide is designed to help you find the scholarly and professional conversation in the discipline in which you are majoring. Most of this conversation takes place in academic journals, but there are also books, often published by university presses; professional magazines (like the magazine College & Research Libraries News for academic librarians); association websites (like the American Psychological Association); conference proceedings; professional blogs; and more. Where the conversation is happening and how it is happening depends on the discipline. For example, in academic libraries, a lot of important communication happens on X/Twitter.
Academic disciplines and professions have their own jargon, which is one of the aspects of language you'll discover.
An additional resource for you to consider are the research guides we make for majors. Many provide information about professional organizations, book titles, and more.
ENG 201 Course Description (except):
Finally, you will write a major paper on your own degree program’s own writing style, with the history of that style, and why it functions the way it does. This final paper will account for the largest portion of your grade, so we will discuss in detail why you should be working on it for the
entirety of the semester.
Assignment Descriptions > Final Paper – The Style of your Studies
Beginning with your Annotated Bibliography you have spent the semester investigating how your own field of study communicates – especially in relation to other fields of study. Your final paper will consist of a well-researched and beautifully written (by the standards of your field) examination of the style, form, and rhetoric of that field. You will draw examples from major works in your field, over time, and show how this style has evolved. There are several ways to think about this, but the words “meta” and “philosophy” might apply most easily. An example: Why (and how) does the style of your discipline try to be objective and what does it mean for the knowledge it is communicating? Does this change how understandings are communicated? Does it change the way we accept certain kinds of knowledge as valid? Remember, also, that in your Auto-Ethnography you explored your own cultural background and it’s likely that some of that will end up in this paper to explain why you’ve chosen the field of study you have. (7-10 pages; at least 15 references)