“Empowering Voices, Building Peace: Women’s Participation in Governance for Sustainable Development in Post-Conflict Syria”

The final paper is worth 35% of your course grade, and is a culminating project for the course. For your paper, identify two different conflicts. One of the conflicts will be the focus of your paper, and the other will be a secondary example developed for comparison. At least one of the two conflicts must involve the United States. Your paper should include a detailed overview and critical analysis of each conflict and peace efforts, including its history, an overview of the stakeholders, and its current level of escalation. The final paper should focus approximately 80% on your primary conflict, and 20% on the secondary one.

Your paper should do at least one of the following things:

• Plan. Propose a peacebuilding plan to transform, resolve, or end each conflict. As we have seen, this may require imagination, because conflicts often appear to be intractable, unending, and unend-able. Argue for the viability of your plan in terms of the approaches, concepts, and models of this course. Be sure to mention risks, opportunities, and variables that may impact the viability of your plan.
• History. Examine the history of each social conflict and related peace efforts. Can you identify which factors were most important in shaping each conflict: either escalating it beyond the power of resolution, or bringing about meaningful transformations toward peace? Be sure to mention risks, opportunities, and variables, drawing on course perspectives and approaches. How might things have turned out differently if different decisions or actions had been made? Why?

I am also open to alternative designs for the Final Paper assignment. Feel free to dialog with me about it, through Canvas Message. Do not work on an alternative project without getting my permission first, as I must make sure that your work will be compatible with the course goals and aims. The deadline for proposing an alternative final project is 8:00 pm Friday of Week 13.

The final paper must be a minimum of 3,000 words (which is approximately 12 pages). It should be well written, employ MLA, API or Chicago style guides, and cite at least 8 significant and relevant scholarly sources. Also, feel free to share drafts, outlines, overviews, etc with me for feedback before the deadline. Here are some writing suggestions:

• I strongly suggest that you put some thought into a good title for your paper. The title is the spot in your paper that will be read most closely, and is most likely to be remembered. This is an ideal place to deliver a phrase, wording, or description that draws the reader into your paper and perhaps even begins to convince them of your conclusions. An example of a poor title is “Final Paper in American Peace & Conflict Studies”: this does nothing to present your topic or conclusions. A better title could be, “Diplomatic Channels Tried and Failed: A Historical Overview of Peacebuilding Efforts During the 50 Years War in Europe.” This title gets your reader to consider the topic, and even catch a glimpse of what you will conclude. The title is your best real estate, and I recommend that you use it effectively.
• Please use first person pronouns (I, me) when you are putting forward your own personal point of view, theory, approach, etc. I understand that you may have been told in the past never to use the word “I” in a university paper. I respectfully and strongly disagree. In contemporary social science, most of us today consider it to be problematic, perhaps even deceptive to omit the word I, because to do so could be to mask the source of the ideas. If an idea comes from you, it is useful to clarify this.
• Your campus writing center is a wonderful resource; I recommend that you use it! These tutors are there to help you improve your writing, at any level. They are not just remedial. It is always possible to improve writing, and in doing so you learn how to improve your writing for future papers, reports, corporate communications, grant proposals, or whatever your future holds for you. Improving writing, at any level, can make you more persuasive and eloquent, and it can empower you in the future to open doors that you may not even realize are there.