Capstone Advice Anthropology 2020

Spring 2020
ANTHROPOLOGY DEPARTMENT CAPSTONE GUIDELINES

Your Senior Capstone Project provides an opportunity for you, anthropology majors, to
demonstrate and reflect on what you have learned during your undergraduate anthropology
education; it should engage both historical and contemporary theory and criticism. It is
important to the anthropology faculty that you develop a critical anthropology lens and
language concerning how you think about and write about the human experience. This
document is designed to help you understand what our expectations are and to provide some
guidance as you design your projects.
I. Official Department Guidelines
Anthropology Department guidelines state that the only requirements for the Senior Capstone
Project are that it must: 1) involve original research; 2) be of an anthropological nature (broadly
defined) drawing on and using your anthropological training and education; and 3) be of a very
high quality in terms of its scholarly rigor, impact, and readiness for public dissemination. The
project can take many forms, including a mini-ethnography, an archaeological report, a bio-
physical anthropology conference paper, a sociolinguistic analysis, a major research paper, a
published article, a health study, a program evaluation, other work produced for a non-profit or
other organization, a film or video, a podcast, a website, an app, a zine, even fiction, poetry, or
some combination of the above, among other options.
Capstones should generally be (or represent, if the final form is not a paper) the equivalent of
approximately 30-50 pages of writing. Non-written capstones require complementary writing to
introduce, frame, or reflect on one’s project. Other than in exceptional circumstances (which
will require Institutional Review Board approval), research may not be conducted with people
under 18 years of age or with any other vulnerable populations.
II. Suggested Timeline
This timeline is for those who plan to graduate in the spring of your senior year. If you are
graduating earlier or later, the timeline will need to be modified.
Fall semester, junior year: Start thinking about potential research topics. What excites you so
much that you could spend over a year thinking about it? (See section III:A below for more
ideas about how you could begin to narrow your topic down.)
Spring semester, junior year: Settle on a topic. Ask your anthropology department advisor and
your other professors to help you think through ideas. Some students find it helpful to collect
data during the summer preceding their senior year, but this requires some diligent advanced
thinking!
Summer before senior year: Conduct research/begin gathering data for your project if possible.
Fall semester, senior year: Take the required ANTH-452 methods class. Test various methods
during the class. The final project for this class is a research proposal for the capstone project.
Spring 2020
Many students will not have conducted any research or started collecting data, so this proposal
helps you to collect your thoughts and design your research. Even if you have already started
your research, writing this document will be very helpful for you. By the end of the semester,
you should have a good sense of what you need to do to finish your capstone in the spring.
Spring semester, senior year: Take ANTH-453: Senior Capstone Class. In this class you will likely
still be collecting data. You will also analyze your data and write and compile your final project.
The first final draft of your capstone will be due not long after spring break, and the final weeks
of the semester are spent revising, adding more literature, editing, and otherwise finalizing the
Capstone. You will also publicly present your work to others (at the university, in the
department, and beyond) as a part of your capstone experience.
III. Writing Your Capstone
We compiled these points to help you plan for your capstone, the capstone writing and
research process, and important sections of most capstones. This guidance will also help you
prepare to write your research proposal in the fall semester preceding the capstone course.
A. Your research question: What do you want to know and why is this research
important?
 A good, original research question is one that asks a simple, important question about
some aspect of the world.
 You should not know the answer to your research question. If you do, there is no reason
to conduct the research. Make sure you find a question that you are genuinely
interested in answering.
 Your research question should not have been answered by someone else.
 Your research question must be answerable in the time you have available.
 You can tell us why your research question is important.
 You can explain your research question and your project to your parents, peers, and
people outside the university who is interested in the world. Connect your topic to the
kinds of important questions a thoughtful person should ask about the world.
 Your research question should be in your own words. Do not use a quotation from
someone else to explain your research question.
B. What has anthropology and other scholarship said about this topic and why does it
matter for your project?
 Reading prior anthropological and other scholarship about a topic that interests you is a
great way to develop a capstone project and a specific, concrete research question that
will guide your research, analysis, and writing. Reading prior scholarship will help you
understand what questions have been answered by scholars and what questions still
Spring 2020
need to be snered.
 By the time you start your research, you will need to be able to explain the important
ideas and scholarship that inform your topic.
 You will need to know key anthropological texts and scholars who have looked at your
topic.
 You will need to be able to explain how anthropological thought has moved through a
series of different perspectives on your topic.
C. Methods. What methods will you use and how will you use them?
 Start by asking yourself: What methods will allow me to collect the data I need to
answer the question I am asking.
 Eventually, you will need to explain how each method collects or creates data that will
help you answer your research question.
 You should have a diversity of methods. You CANNOT only conduct interviews, for
example.
 You should explain exactly how much, how many, how long, how many times you will
employ a given method.
 You should explain what kinds of relationships will enable you to do this research, how
you and others will create these relationships, and the way these relationships might
affect the information and data you create.
D. Ethics: What are the ethics of your project? What are the risks? What are the benefits?
 You should think deeply and carefully about the ethics of your capstone project during
every stage of planning, research, analysis, writing, and dissemination.
 You should be able to identify any ethical concerns raised by your project, including any
risks to research participants or anyone else involved in or affected by your research.
 You should be able to explain to anyone the planned benefits of your research to your
research participants and others in your research setting, to the world, and to academic
thought.
 You should dedicate yourself to continuous critical self-reflection about your research,
your methods, your research relationships and how your own social positioning in the
world (sex/gender, race/ethnicity, class, nationality, (dis)ability, religion, etc.) will shape
every aspect of the project.
D. Your research findings
What we’re looking for:

 We need to see the detail. Quotes; transcriptions of conversations; explicated field
notes, data counts based on your observations of a set of artifacts, ethnographic
writing, photos or other powerful evidentiary testimony that says “I was there”
Spring 2020
 You found NEW INFORMATION that you did not expect. It’s impossible to do fieldwork
and not be confronted with the unexpected
E. Summarizing, concluding and extending your findings
What we’re looking for:

 Reflect on your initial goals and research question. How did your growing knowledge
shift your perspective on your topic?
 What were your most important findings?
 How has your work contributed to the understanding of this topic?
 What do your findings say to debates or conclusions of previous scholarship?
 What new questions does your study bring up?
IV: Presenting Your Project

In consultation with your ANTH-453 professor, you will present your project at various stages in
class, at the student research conference that is usually held in the spring, and finally to the
anthropology department. This last presentation has, in recent years, taken the form of an
academic-style poster that you present during a celebratory event. (You will learn how to
create this visual representation of your research and findings in class.)

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Spring 2020

ANTHROPOLOGY DEPARTMENT CAPSTONE GUIDELINES

D. Your research findings

What we’re looking for:

E. Summarizing, concluding and extending your findings

What we’re looking for:

IV: Presenting Your Project

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