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The thesis proposal should be approximately 8 pages long, exclusive of title page and bibliography.
Supply the proposed title of your thesis, your name, degree program, and the names of your director and two committee members (with signature/date lines for them to indicate acceptance of the proposal).
Establish what question or questions you are trying to answer, and explain why those questions are significant to the field in which you are working.
This section should include both a description of your project and a justification for undertaking it. The justification should establish (a) the significance of your research agenda (why your question is worthy of attention); and (b) its relation to existing research in the field.
The relation to existing research should be explained by supplying a review of the current scholarly literature relating to your topic. Discuss the scholarly work you plan to build upon, as well as other work that you plan to respond to and challenge. Specific works and their approaches or arguments should be discussed in some detail. Finally, locate your thesis within this scholarly discourse surrounding your topic. Why is your work an important contribution to the existing discourse?
Note: The review of scholarly literature, taken together with your bibliography, is the part of your thesis proposal that fulfills the Graduate School's requirement for a "comprehensive examination." You should be prepared to answer the questions about these works during your oral defense of the thesis proposal, in order to establish your mastery of a sufficient knowledge base in your field of specialization.
Identify the primary source material you plan to work with. Make clear how your sources will suffice to answer the questions posed by your thesis. If some of your sources are in archival or special collections, explain how you will access them within the timeframe of your thesis.
Explain what method or methods you intend to employ that will best enable you to answer the question(s) you have chosen to investigate. Where relevant, describe the theoretical basis for the validity of your approach.
Provide an explanation of how you plan to structure your thesis. This section should include a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of your writing, describing what will be covered in each chapter. A typical thesis includes three or four chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion.
Provide a 2-3-page bibliography. Divide your listing into primary and secondary sources. All sources mentioned in other parts of your proposal should appear in this bibliography. The secondary bibliography should contain 20-30 items, constituting the equivalent of a "comprehensive examination field."