Rethinking Iran, Images and Realities
Short Paper Guidelines
Eshragh Motahar/Winter 2024As the Syllabus states: your short paper assignment is due, in pdf format, e-mailed to me, on Thursday, February 8, by the beginning of class. The penalty for late submission is one point per hour. The short paper constitutes 15% of your course grade.
Here are the guidelines for this paper:
- Format. 4 pages maximum, double-spaced, Times New Roman 12 point, 1" margins all around. Ancillary material, such as endnotes, photographs (if used), charts and tables (if used), etc., may be put on additional pages. You need a descriptive title for your short paper. Do not forget to paginate the paper.
- Topic. The topic must be based on the material covered in the two required books. You should choose a topic that is sharply focused. As much as possible, base your paper on BOTH books. However, you should do this in a coherent and judicious way. To put it bluntly: Simply drawing on both books in a haphazard way in an attempt to presumably maximize the appearance of having read both books won't work. You may, of course, use other sources in addition to the required two books.
- Quality of Writing. The paper must be well-organized and well-written. You will lose points for spelling, grammatical, stylistic and similar errors. Please make sure to use the help provided by the Writing Center as soon as possible, and as frequently as needed. Check out their website here.
- Consultation with me. Before you finalize your topic, make sure to run it by me. I suggest that you come up with 2-3 topics (as potential candidates), write them down (plus page references from the books where the idea is covered), and e-mail me. Be prepared for a discussion of your proposed topics. Make absolutely sure to run these topics by me by no later than Friday, February 2nd. After that discussion, you will be in a better position to finalize your topic and proceed with writing.
- E-mail me your completed paper in pdf format.
