Honors Project Guidelines

It is a good idea to pursue a topic you have already done some work in, perhaps in a seminar or an independent study. It is important to choose something you really care about, since you will be intimately and exhaustingly committed to this topic for an entire academic year. 

All honors projects use primary sources, whether they be literary or visual texts, diaries or letters, oral histories or survey responses, government documents or newspapers, so you will want to determine what is available to you as soon as possible. For projects dependent on fieldwork, we highly encourage you to think ahead and capitalize on study away opportunities for honors preparation.

You will need to formulate a focused research question and an argument, not merely collect material or rehash what has already been written about your topic. This is the principal difference between an honors thesis and other term papers or independent studies you may have done. Your thesis will require you to place your argument clearly within the scholarly literature on your topic, responding to past thinkers. Although you begin the project with a working question or hypothesis, the final formulation of your question and argument may not emerge until rather late in the process, so you may need to constantly set and revise your framework. This is a normal part of conducting an extended research project, mirroring the process faculty go through in their own scholarship.

An Asian Studies honors project is directed by a faculty adviser and guided by a committee, typically comprised of two additional faculty members from the Asian Studies Program. In some cases, depending on the nature of the project, one of the three readers or an additional fourth reader may be a faculty member from outside the program.

In the spring semester of your junior year, you should consult with the faculty member whom you would like to direct your project. He or she will give you advice and perhaps steer you to other faculty members. At the start of the following fall, the Asian Studies faculty will collectively decide on the composition of your committee.

Throughout September, you will work with your project director to draft a research proposal. This proposal should be 3-5 pages in length and outline your research question, methodology, and argumentative scope. Depending on the disciplinary nature of your project, you may expand on your working hypothesis, evidence base, conceptual or theoretical framework, or relevant scholarly debates. You may also consider including a preliminary chapter outline and a working bibliography; we encourage you to seek out primary sources in an Asian language here.

Toward the end of September, you will distribute your proposal to your committee and the Asian Studies faculty, and in early October, you will make a brief oral presentation based on this proposal. At this meeting, the program faculty will offer feedback and suggestions on research direction.

Thereafter, the exact schedule for submitting written sections will be determined in consultation between you and your committee. A typical timeline may look as follows:

• early December (last week of classes): submit first major section
• mid-February: submit second major section
• early April: submit draft of entire project
• early May (no later than the last week of classes): submit revised draft of entire project

At each stage of submission, you will meet with your committee, ideally as a collective, to receive both written and oral feedback. After you submit the first major section in December, and again after you submit the full draft in April, your committee will determine whether the thesis has progressed sufficiently to move forward as an honors project or needs to be completed as an advanced independent study instead. Once the project proceeds to the May deadline, your committee will read the revised thesis and again determine whether it is of honors quality.

As a public document that is stored in the library, an honors thesis must be judged primarily on the basis of its achievement. A successful honors thesis typically includes the following: 

• a clearly articulated argument that advances understanding of the subject in the context of the secondary literature;
• a careful mining of and grappling with primary sources and a critical reading of secondary sources;
• an appropriate conceptual or theoretical framework for analyzing and organizing the evidence; and
• clear, cogent, and coherent writing, with proper use of citations and little to no typographical or grammatical error. 

There is no length requirement for an honors thesis in Asian Studies. You and your committee will decide on a length appropriate to a research project in your discipline and subfield.