ClassInfo

Students in this workshop will serve as the graduate student board for The Society Pages, an online social science journalism project housed at the University of Minnesota. Participation is based on application. In addition to experience and qualifications, the board is selected so as to involve students from different stages in the program, substantive interest areas, and methodological specialties. Most participants are expected to make a year-long commitment to the project, though membership will rotate on an annual basis.

• To deepen students' substantive research expertise
  by engaging cutting edge sociological scholarship. Students will unearth the most interesting findings and best evidence from new research in their areas of study. This provides students with a broader vision of the sociological field and offers an opportunity to diversify their reading in the prelim and dissertation processes.
  

• To develop writing and communication skills
  in addressing academic and non-academic audiences. Grad board members regularly write for the website, and our supportive, professional editorial team gives direct feedback designed to improve these skills as the pieces are published online.
  

• To gain deep, practical appreciation of the process of editorial decision-making
  and public scholarship.
  TSP
  had almost 11 million unique page views last year. Working with the site allows students to engage in critical and constructive discussion of the field of sociology, while participating in a collaborative public outreach project by shaping and improving the site as an online vehicle to disseminate great research.
  

  
  

Graduate students in this course will submit a paper to an academic journal by the end of the semester.

Students should start the semester with (1) a research project that is essentially completed but (2) a manuscript describing that research that has not been started or is not very far along. The objective of the course is to help students develop a strong, persuasive, and publishable research manuscript.

The class is open to students who use any methodological and theoretical approaches, who study any substantive topic, and who are from any discipline or program.

Throughout the class, students will develop their manuscripts through writing and revising based on the instructor's and their classmates' feedback and examples.