Group Project Proposal Criteria

Here are the limiting criteria for the proposal for the group polemical project. These now apply to all groups.

The proposal will between one and four double-spaced pages in length, detailing the focus, scope, content, form and intention of the project.It must take the form of a set of failure standards -- applying the falsification concept from experimental science, where a theory is ranked as scientific only when it is capable of being falsified in a reproducible trial.

For instance, "The project will be judged to have failed if it does not:

• advance an academic thesis,
• reference one or more of the primary course texts,
• reference at least one of Victorian essayists on the course reading list,
• base itself on Charles Darwin's conception of either social degeneracy or progress, as expressed in the Darwin handout package.
• form itself as a polemic, in the manner of the Victorian essays and fiction,
• engage a present-day issue of either degeneration or progressivism,
• contain two thousand words per student or equivalent,
• show evidence of equal participation from all group members,
• effectively apply the ideas of the Victorian age -- as represented by one of the great prose writers, and with reference to one of the important novelists -- to any of the issues that our own society has with either progression or degeneration,
• &c, &c."

Nb. Polemical here is meant in its plain sense. For review, see (as always) the Oxford English Dictionary, and note how all the essays in our course, and all the fiction with the exception of The Mill on the Floss, are polemical. There is explanation of the contemporary polemical context on the assignment post.