The instructor assists the student in formulating a research topic on the area the student is interested in. 1. The instructor assists the student in searching, assessing, summarizing, integrating, and synthesizing essential reviews of literature on the chosen topic. 2. The instructor assists the student in relating current research to prior related research. 3. Regular meeting time will be scheduled for the instructor to monitor the student’s progress.

The Independent Study course allows each student to work on a project of their own interest that may be turned into a research topic for a dissertation. Each student will focus on an area that they are interested in and will engage in searching, assessing, summarizing, integrating, and synthesizing essential literature on the chosen topic. This includes both a selection of primary sources and secondary sources on the topic. Students will meet regularly with the teacher to monitor the individual student’s progress. At regular intervals over the semester students will present progress reports for discussion with other students in the class. At the end of the semester students will develop and write an extended essay or have developed a chapter or chapters and an outline for the dissertation.

A number of primary and secondary materials related to individual research projects will be collected by the students with guidance from the teacher. Additional useful readings may be discussed in individual and progress report sessions.

Student: Sean Lin
Exploring a topic in translation of literature (children’s literature or adult literature), particularly focused on representations of religion in translated fiction.

Sean Lin will collect, read, and study a wide variety of texts (children’s books or adult books) that have been translated into Chinese related to his special interest of representations of religion in translated works in order to find a number of texts to consider for further in-depth study and analysis. At the same time he will be reading theoretical background studies on translation analysis and descriptive translation studies. Theoretical perspectives useful for the study of his chosen texts will be explored at a later stage. At the end of the project Sean Lin will either come up with a proposal for his thesis on translation of religion in literature and/or write an extended essay on the topic translation of religion in literature.