Academic skills
Week Eleven, 7. 12. 2023
Work in Progress Seminar II
Dr. Šárka Jelínek Gmiterková

Agenda
•Structure
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•Presenting development in the projects since Work in Progress Seminar I
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•Responding to any initial concerns, argumentation spotlight, organization of the
material/data/examples
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•Targeted Learning Outcome
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•Receiving ongoing feedback
•Potential crisis solving scenarios

If you have not presented during Work in Progress I…
•Tell us briefly about your project. Focus on introducing the topic, research question(s) and both
primary and secondary sources.
•Your colleagues are kindly asked to provide you with feedback and comments.
• Do you still have any major issues with the project? (weak or too broad/narrow topic, no
scholarship background, lack of data…)
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What is the progress since Work in Progress I?
•Are you:
•A) sticking with your original idea
•B) have you changed it completely?
•If A) is the case, what is you main argument/the core thesis of your paper?
•If A) is the case, are you already thinking about the structure?
•If B) is the case, then what is your new topic? What are your primary and secondary sources, what
is your research question?

In case you still wonder about the topic/argument…
•… hit the panic button.
•Solution to such issues exist, but will consume more of your time and thinking proces.
•Start with a piece of scholarship. By this time you must have read some academic papers, so build
your piece around it.
•We have read Miranda Banks‘s paper on the feminist approach in production studies. Do you have a
case that could employ such paradigm?
•You have seen Richard focusing on Barbie trailers and analysing it through Klinger‘s and Kernan‘s
perspectives. Are there any trailers that would benefit from similar approach?
•Find a case, which confirms the findings/methodological approach in a specific temporal,
geo-political, cultural or national context.
•If you have a case you do not want to give up (film, character, book, video, artist…), then try to
find an argument attached to it
•Find an academic paper you can agree or disagree with with the aid of carefully selected examples.

In case you feel comfortably settled in your topic
•… think strategically.
•Start writting your first draft.
•This means scribbling down some notes and ideas into paragraphs, which might be at the core of
individual sections.
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•Stay on the lookout for additional examples – even if you do not need more, you can always find
better (meaning more persuasive) ones.
•Although you might be finished with collecting your data, there is always a chance to do some
further reading (not necessarily scholarship).
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Take-aways
•Thinking about topics, examples and specific cases is a fun thing to do.
•Trying to come up with precise arguments and original inputs into existing discussions in a
certain field with the help of the cases you started with is a much more difficult task.
•An easy way out is to confront dominant viewpoints with case studies that show different or
opposing perspective, undermine or broaden presented findings and/or support the conclusions in the
published paper(s).
•In case you are still not sure about your topic and scholarship combination, start with
identifying academic paper you want to build your argumentation around. There is always more cases
and examples than relevant academic perspectives.
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Next time
•Date: 14. 12.
•Instructor: Richard
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•Topic: Project Presentation Seminar I: Writing
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•Outcome: Precise, economic, elegant writing.
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•Prepare: Think about when you encountered a piece of scholarship that helped you understand a
challenging idea.
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