you will need to submit a 7- to 8-page research paper over a world music topic of interest to you. You may choose any topic you like, with the exception of the music that you listen to on a daily basis (for most of you that will mean American pop music; for others it will mean the commercial music of your country of origin). The rationale behind this assignment is to have you broaden your horizons by becoming better acquainted with the unfamiliar. Don’t try to skirt the spirit of this assignment by making some kind of vacuous case to write a paper over the explosion of the K-Pop phenomenon or the use of music in video games. Look at the syllabus. Try to figure out what the spirit of this course is. Choose a topic that is commensurate with what you see in my instructional plan, and write accordingly. Your paper will need to include the usual components of a formal paper worth 25% of your grade in a 3-hour course: a thesis paragraph that lays out your intent in clear terms, ample documentation of your research using an accepted citation style of your choosing (Turabian, APA, etc.), a works cited list, and 7-8 pages of well-written prose in which the usual grammatical, syntactical and stylistic conventions that apply to serious writing are assiduously observed. You should count on consulting at least five scholarly sources (encyclopedia entries, journal articles, monographs, etc.) in the course of your research. If you plan to use online sources, make sure they are scholarly – Wikipedia does not count, nor do web pages constructed by travel agencies, etc. Don’t ask me about this later: read it now and take it to heart. You should use a standard font such as Times New Roman, 12 pt., double-spaced. In order to receive full credit for this assignment, you must submit work that is gratifying for me to read instead of aggravating. Keep reading.