Propose a Peanuts Research Project

Rationale

Over the course of the semester, we’ve considered Peanuts from a number of different angles, but they’ve all been steered by my choices. That’s fair, of course: I’m the one who is supposed to be teaching you. But now is your time to think about what you’d like to learn about Peanuts and propose a possible research project.

Engaging in this sort of speculative thinking should help you synthesize what you’ve learned in this class—as well as our class last semester—and apply it to Peanuts.

Nitty Gritty

For this project, you will write a two- to three-page proposal for a research project that you would want to undertake with Peanuts using one or more DH approaches. This short proposal will be due by 11:59pm on Wednesday, 22 April. You will email the paper to me as a PDF. Please name your file “lastname”-peanuts-proposal.pdf (e.g., croxall-peanuts-proposal.pdf).

What should your proposal have in it?

First and foremost, you should articulate a research question. An example of a research question is the one that I have returned to all semester: which characters co-occur most frequently in Peanuts. This is a question that I did not (at the time) know the answer to but that I knew could be answered. Make sure that you describe why you want to know the answer to this question.

Second, you should articulate how you would go about answering or investigating your research question. How would you go about answering this question? What methods would you use to get these answers? What would you have to do to prepare the data—adding tags to encoded strips, for example—to get the answers that you want? Please note that you do not have to get the answer or carry out the research! Instead, this is a process of describing how you think you could answer the question.

What sort of things could my project consider?

You should think about any number of aspects of Schulz’s strip that you could investigate:

  • Characters
  • Dialogue and/or other visible text in the strip
  • Illustrations (meaning the art, proper, of the strip)
  • Compare/contrast across time (e.g. 1950s vs 1970s)
  • Compare/contrast strips to other media
  • And so on

What sort of methods could I use?

You should think about the approaches that we used in this class—as well as last semester’s class:

  • Archives/collections (based on what you might have seen in the DH project report)
  • Encoding XML/CBML
  • Topic Modeling
  • Network Analysis
  • Word frequencies (like Eridrich and Voyant)
  • Mapping (like Mrs. Dalloway)
  • Image analysis (like the z-projections of films)

You can also think about methods that we haven’t tried but that you think might exist (e.g., using some programming to find the number of times a word appears).

I’ve never done something like this before, how do I do this?

First, I would suggest spending some time brainstorming. Think about what you’d really like to know about Peanuts that you don’t currently know. Draw on everything we’ve done throughout the semester, whether it’s your daily comics, the annotated bibliography, or anything else. Allow this to percolate in your brain for a bit.

Second, sit down and just bang it out. Plan to spend an hour on it. Certainly don’t spend more than two. After you’ve finished, check your proposal for grammar and ask yourself if a reader who isn’t you (e.g., me!) will be able to understand what you’ve written and your thought process. Strive for A → B → C → D rather than A → D.

Does this need to be formatted in a particular way, like a lab report or something?

No. It should be written in prose rather than bullet points. Make sure you’re clear what your research question is, and then write as clearly as you can about how you think you could go about answering the question.

Grades

This proposal is worth 75 points. You will be graded on whether you include a clear description of your research question as well as why you think it is important. You will also be graded on your articulation of what methods will allow you to get the answer. Finally, you will be graded on the clarity of your writing.

Credits

This is a new assignment for this year. As with many things this year, it’s being conceived of on the fly in response to all the crazy.