Music

Topic Finding and Thesis Formation

• Follow your interest.
• Look for tensions, anomalies and unanswered questions.
• What assumptions have been made in previous scholarship surrounding a topic?
• What critical approaches have and haven't been taken with certain topics?
• Narrow or broaden an area of interest, and look for ways you can situate an argument within a larger argument, or in opposition to another argument.
• Look outside of music at other influences and factors that are related to your topic.

Initial Exploration

• Encyclopedias
• Google (Scholar, Web, Images, Books)
• WorldCat  or OxyWorldCat
• Newspapers