BA theses in religion  

Your first step will be deciding on your topic. Often you start with a broad interest. Often, you need to narrow your topic so that it's manageable and of interest to others. Here are some approaches to narrowing your topic:

• Scan or browse encyclopedia entries and/or handbooks on your topic. This will help you identify main themes and issues. A good encyclopedia essay or handbook will give you a sense of the breadth and complexity of a topic. After scanning an encyclopedia or handbook, sometimes it's clear that your initial topic is too broad or complex. Both of these types of reference tools will also include bibliographies to get you started.
• Use The Craft of Research as your guide. The authors help you move from a general interest to a topic to research questions to problems to sources.
• Do a quick literature review to see how your topic has been addressed by others. You can use a subject specific journal index (e.g., ATLA Religion Database) to survey the journal literature on a given topic. Sometimes, you learn that your topic has been well researched in the past so you'll need to develop a new approach or address a new problem or question.
• Try writing an outline or a rough sketch of what you need to do to write on your topic. Does your outline or sketch seem plausible? Can you adequately address your topic given your page and time limits?

Finding primary sources: There's no one way to do this. A primary source for one person may be a secondary source for another. Identify what your primary sources are, then use a library tool to find them.

• For books, use the library catalog, Lens, or WorldCat.
• For manuscripts or archival collections, use Lens, the finding aids database, or WorldCat.
• There are many other kinds of primary sources. A librarian can suggest the right tool to find your primary sources.

Think about your methodology--how are you going to gather data and sources and interpret them? Your coursework should help here. Your faculty advisor will also help.

Finding secondary sources:

• For books within the library, use the library catalog or Lens. Use "recall item" and "can't find it" as needed.
• For books outside the library, use WorldCat. Use interlibrary loan as needed. Also, try HathiTrust for older materials.
• For journal articles, use a subject-specific journal index (e.g., ATLA Religion Database or Philosopher's Index).

Citation management software

Other tips:

• Consult the library's research guides.
• Consult the library's database finder.
• Try these tools to access the library's resources when you're off campus.
• As U of C students, you have borrowing privileges at four Hyde Park seminary libraries.

Style guides: Chicago Manual of Style (Online)

Other writing resources