Every research project needs to include the 6 elements below. Hyperlinks lead to a short lecture about each:

• Topic: what is the general subject you wish to research? Here is a lecture on topics. Here is an exercise for " brainstorming topics.
• Question: what about your topic interests you? Why should it interest others?
• Here is an exercise on brainstorming questions Here is a lecture on questions.
• Objects: what specific cases, historical moments, geographical regions, or social groups most intrigue you, with regard to the question you raised, above? (Note: you may want to think of objects as subsets of your original subject, above.) Here is a lecture on objects.
• Lens: whose theoretical work will inform and influence you as you consider your questions vis a vis your objects? Here is a lecture on theoretical lenses.You can find more material on theory by clicking through the menus at the top of this page.
• Method: precisely what original work will you be doing as part of your research, how will you do it, when, where, with whom, and why? Here is a lecture on methods. You can find more material on methods by clicking through the menus at the top of this page.
• Presentation: how, when, and where do you plan to deliver the findings or results of your original work to your audience?You can find more material on presentation by clicking through the menus at the top of this page.

Click on the image below to enlarge. Download it as a PDF file here.

Here are some resources I’ve given students to help them think about which theory and theorists they might deploy in their work:

• There’s a Theorist for That! A Chart
• Theory Overview Pieces: A Quick Biblio
• Theory Readings for many topics in Contemporary Culture & Creative Production
• Assorted Theory Lectures from Terri (many older and sort of outdated, but possibly of use)

Close Reading Notes (more to come):

• Visuality & The Right to Look by Nicholas Mirzoeff
• Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway
• Why Do Brands Cause Trouble by Douglas Holt
• More on Power/Knowledge by Gayatri Spivak
• Free by Lawrence Lessig
• Spectres of Marx by Jacques Derrida

• Donna Haraway’s Manifesto for Cyborgs
  Nicholas Mirzoeff’s Vision & Visuality/Right to Look
  Douglas Holts’s Why Do Brands Cause Trouble
  Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture
  Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx
  Gayatri Spivak’s More on Power Knowledge

• There’s a Method for That! A Chart
• Traditional Methods Text: A Bibliography
• Creative Methods Texts: A Bibliography

• Human Subjects Research Forms & Guidelines for NYU
• Data Coding & Write-Up An Introduction
• Coding Fieldwork: A Mapping
• Class Spreadsheet for Fieldwork Findings

• Conducting Scholarly Source searching
• Popular literature and Web searching
• You might also have questions about: Popular v. Scholarly sources

• Learning to Read Visually
• Producing Reader Reports
• Mapping Your Literature

Note: I no longer have students complete a formal, singular literature review for thesis projects. Instead, the produce targeted reports and then map those reports to their overall project, as per the links above.

• Assessing Creative Projects and Student Examples
• Proposing Art as Research
• Assessing Art as Research

Tutorials & Class Exercises for Display:

Presenting with Canva
Presenting & Connecting on Tumblr
Making an Intro Video: A Script for You

Tutorials & Class Exercises for Project Management:

Getting started with Slack
Managing your Thesis with Trello
Using Evernote & Web Clipper
Using Feedly, Evernote & RefMe

Resources:

• Organization, To-Do and Communication Tools
• Creative Production Tools
• Tools for Thinking Visually