One of the major objectives of taking a course in the Study of Religion, is to provide a forum and context in which you may research a topic of particular interest relating to the history, development, insemination, propagation, realization, success, decline, and/or appearance/disappearance of any religious phenomenon, ritual, symbol, myth, or set of phenomena which pique your interest, raise your curiosity, or strike your fancy. Quite obviously this is an invitation to explore a wide and diverse variety of religious themes and issues, as religion and religious issues intersect at practically every juncture of life. Religion is particularly instrumental in the forming of values. Everything at one time or another has been used for religious purposes or has been interpreted in a religious light. The religions of the world provide, indeed, a vast ground for exploration. The choice of paper topics has a wide range of flexibility in the hopes that students will pursue subjects that command their interests and spark their imaginations. You will want to begin exploring possible topics from practically the beginning of the course and should not only feel free but consider it a necessary step in your preparation to consult the instructor concerning your topic. In a lower division course, students are naturally not expected to write an exhaustively expansive research paper on their subject, but they do need to demonstrate the research skills that will carry them to greater levels of sophistication as they advance through their academic preparation. Upper division students are of course held to much higher standards due to their greater sophistication and preparation.Search your heart, mind, and various indexes such as the course textbooks, encyclopedias dedicated to the subject matter, specific facts on file such as found in the humanities index for example, the library catalogue, guides to periodic literature, journal articles held by the library, your particular family history, and/or the bookshelves of esoteric bookstores… Pick a subject that has some delineated avenues of research, such as a subject you might fine listed in the Encyclopedia of Religion (ed. Mircea Eliade). Look at the bibliography at the end of the article, pay special attention to the titles of the books. See if we have those books in our library. Go up to where the books are stored in the stacks. Look at a particular book’s table of contents. Browse. Look at the books on the shelf next to the ones you are looking at. Think creatively …Recommended Types of Resources: Encyclopedia Articles: a good encyclopedia article is like a road map to an unfamiliar terrain. It will orient, inform, and direct you to further research, while providing you with a general understanding of its specific subject. Look at the related articles listed in the body of the text. Note the bibliographical information at the end of the article. Text Books: many text books have sections called “Suggestions for Further Reading.” Quite often these will include the most significant or foremost authorities on that particular chapter’s subject. Reference Works: the reference section of the Library has many dedicated reference works that are devoted to particular and discrete areas of study. There are many reference works in religion, such as reader’s guides to religious literature and various guides to the journals that are published in particular areas such as theology or church history. Many such reference works have divisions devoted to American Religion. Journals and Journal Abstracts: Some journals are devoted to the exploration of religious topics and would contain many articles pertinent to the Religious Scene. Other journals provide overlapping areas of interest. Consulting lists of articles published in those journals can be a very fruitful area of research for your paper. In addition the Journal article provides a great model for your own scholarly work in the field. Monographs: These books written by a single author can yield a great amount of research and scholarly perspective on particular topics of interest. Many such monographs have become the seminal authority on a field of research. Many monographs are attacks on such seminal authorities. Looking at diverse works and scholarly opinions in conflict can provide a richly contextualized research paper. The Internet: There is absolutely no way to avoid the use of computers in the construction of your research paper. Computers are no longer the wave of the future they are increasingly the sine qua non (that without which one cannot do) for scholarly research. Computers will become so much a part of your life that many of you will be candidates for cranial cyber implants (for some, the sooner the better…) Seriously, however, many resources are now accessible only by going “on-line.” Library catalogues are only the tip of the iceberg. Internet searches via various bibliographical data bases (publishers catalogues complete with abstracts for example), dedicated Web-pages, and scholarly bulletin boards are increasingly common sources of inspiration and research for academic articles.