RHET 1302 Proposal and Annotated Bibliography Submit: Upload online through Blackboard Draft: No Length: 2.5 pages (plus Works Cited page) Sources: THREE: *You must include a “Works Cited” page in MLA format. (Remember, your Works Cited page does not factor towards the total page count.) Points: 50 points total (page 1 = 20 points; each source paragraph entry on the annotated bibliography is worth 10 points) Purpose: For more information about the topic and requirements of the final essay, see the Assignment Description for Essay #3. For information on how to write a successful academic proposal, refer to page 180 in your textbook. Format: Page 1: Proposal In the first page, you need to cover the following material in several, well-crafted paragraphs. 1. What invention/ innovation will you be researching? What is it? What does it do? 2. Give some background information about your topic- Who created it or is credited with its development? Why was it made? What are the circumstances in which it was invented? Page 2-2.5: Annotated Bibliography On the next pages, you need to write a paragraph about THREE specific sources. For each source, you need to cover the following information: 1. Begin the entry with a bibliographic citation- see the sample posted in eLearning as a model for what your annotated bibliography should look like. 2. Give some context for this source- Who is the author? Who published it? When was it written? 3. How does this source relate to the topic you are researching? 4. What does this source actually talk about? 5. How will you be using this source in your final research paper? Last Name 1 Student Name RHET 1302 Professor Riley Date Proposal and Annotated Bibliography For the final research paper, I choose to focus my research on the birth control pill the various ways it has impacted women over the years. The combined oral contraceptive pill contains naturally occurring hormones, Estradiol and Progesterone, that suppress female ovulation and allow the body to mimic the conditions of pregnancy, in a way. In order for a female to release an egg, the Luteinizing hormone (LH) and the Follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) within the body need to sharply spike in concentration. However, when using a birth control pill, the hormones within the pill block the release of LH and FSH, therefore preventing ovulation. Sharp drops in Progesterone and Estradiol lead to the shedding of the uterine lining, or menstruation. The pill keeps the concentration of these hormones at a high, preventing menstruation in addition to ovulation. The Pill comes in many different doses and schedules, but the most common combination pills come in 21 or 28-day packs in which the women takes 1 pill every day. The pack of pills also contains a week’s worth of “placebo pills” that don’t contain any hormones, allowing the .

1. RHET 1302
Proposal and Annotated Bibliography
Submit: Upload online through Blackboard
Draft: No
Length: 2.5 pages (plus Works Cited page)
Sources: THREE: *You must include a “Works Cited” page in
MLA format. (Remember, your
Works Cited page does not factor towards the total page count.)
Points: 50 points total (page 1 = 20 points; each source
paragraph entry on the annotated
bibliography is worth 10 points)
Purpose: For more information about the topic and
requirements of the final essay, see the
Assignment Description for Essay #3. For information on how
to write a successful academic
proposal, refer to page 180 in your textbook.

2. Format:
Page 1: Proposal
In the first page, you need to cover the following material in
several, well-crafted paragraphs.
1. What invention/ innovation will you be researching? What is
it? What does it do?
2. Give some background information about your topic- Who
created it or is credited with its
development? Why was it made? What are the circumstances in
which it was invented?
Page 2-2.5: Annotated Bibliography
On the next pages, you need to write a paragraph about THREE
specific sources. For each
source, you need to cover the following information:
1. Begin the entry with a bibliographic citation- see the sample
posted in eLearning as a
model for what your annotated bibliography should look like.
2. Give some context for this source- Who is the author? Who
published it? When was it
written?
3. How does this source relate to the topic you are researching?
4. What does this source actually talk about?

3. 5. How will you be using this source in your final research
paper?
Last Name 1
Student Name
RHET 1302
Professor Riley
Date
Proposal and Annotated Bibliography
For the final research paper, I choose to focus my research on
the birth control pill the
various ways it has impacted women over the years. The
combined oral contraceptive pill
contains naturally occurring hormones, Estradiol and
Progesterone, that suppress female
ovulation and allow the body to mimic the conditions of
pregnancy, in a way. In order for a
female to release an egg, the Luteinizing hormone (LH) and the
Follicle-stimulating hormone

4. (FSH) within the body need to sharply spike in concentration.
However, when using a birth
control pill, the hormones within the pill block the release of
LH and FSH, therefore preventing
ovulation. Sharp drops in Progesterone and Estradiol lead to the
shedding of the uterine lining, or
menstruation. The pill keeps the concentration of these
hormones at a high, preventing
menstruation in addition to ovulation.
The Pill comes in many different doses and schedules, but the
most common combination
pills come in 21 or 28-day packs in which the women takes 1
pill every day. The pack of pills
also contains a week’s worth of “placebo pills” that don’t
contain any hormones, allowing the
woman to menstruate during the week these “placebo pills” are
taken. This allows the woman to
plan when her menstrual cycle will occur, often times coming in
handy when a special occasion
or vacation is coming up.
Margaret Sanger, an American women’s rights activist, was the
first one to popularize the
term “birth control”. She was the founder of the first birth
control clinic and also started the

5. Last Name 2
organization that served as precursor to Planned Parenthood.
One of the things she strongly
believed in was that the solution to female poverty was finding
a way to control family size,
which led to her passionate advocacy of birth control. In the
1950’s, Sanger teamed up with
endocrinologist Gregory Pincus and gynecologist John Rock to
develop the birth control pill. In
1960, the birth control pill was approved by the FDA for
contraceptive use, meeting with both
instant success from women across the United States and
backlash from the Catholic church,
Senate, and some doctors.
Bailey, Martha. “MORE POWER TO THE PILL: THE IMPACT
OF CONTRACEPTIVE
FREEDOM ON WOMEN’S LIFE CYCLE LABOR SUPPLY.”
The Quarterly Journal of
Economics 121.1 (2006): 289–320. Web. Accessed 15 April
2019.

6. Martha Bailey is a professor of Economics at the University of
Michigan as well as a research
professor within the Population Studies Center at the University
of Michigan, and this article by
her explains the impact of the first commercial birth control
pill, Enovid, on women’s
childbearing and career plans. The article describes the link
between legal access to birth control
pills and the number of women in the workforce, the decrease in
births before the age of 21, and
the amount of annual hours worked by women. This relates to
my invention, the birth control
pill, by showcasing the way the pill has contributed to gender
equality and increased freedom for
women. I will use this article to include information and
statistics about the decrease in the
number of births to women younger than 21 as well as discuss
the increase of women in the
workforce, with an emphasis on how the pill has given women
the opportunity to think of what
they want for their future in terms of investments and career
paths.

7. Last Name 3
Brooks, Krista et al. “Birth Control Pills: What You Need to
Know”. National Center for
Health Research, http://www.center4research.org/birth-control-
pills-need-know/. Accessed
15 April 2019.
This article, published by the National Center for Health
Research, is written by 4 authors who
are all educated at the Masters level or higher. This article is a
comprehensive article describing
the science behind the pill, the medical risks and safety
involving the pill, and also benefits that
the pill may have. It goes into detail about how the pill works
within the body as well as the
advancements in the pill over the years and how the health risks
may increase depending on the
type of pill used. I will use this source mostly to discuss the
medical risks involved with taking
the pill as well as the potential benefits that the pill is
sometimes used for. I will also discuss the
different advancements in the pill and the safety issues with
each type.

8. http://www.center4research.org/birth-control-pills-need-know/
Last Name 4
Works Cited
Bailey, Martha. “MORE POWER TO THE PILL: THE IMPACT
OF CONTRACEPTIVE
FREEDOM ON WOMEN’S LIFE CYCLE LABOR SUPPLY.”
The Quarterly Journal of
Economics 121.1 (2006): 289–320. Web. Accessed 15 April
2019.
“Birth Control Pill” Planned Parenthood,
www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/birth-
control-pill. Accessed 15 April 2019.
Brooks, Krista et al. “Birth Control Pills: What You Need to
Know”. National Center for Health
Research, http://www.center4research.org/birth-control-pills-
need-know/. Accessed 15 April
2019.
Michals, Debra. “Margaret Sanger” National Women’s History
Museum, 2017,

9. www.womenshistory.org/education-
resources/biographies/margaret-sanger. Accessed 15 April
2019.
Nikolchev, Alexandra. “A Brief History of the Birth Control
Pill” Need to Know on PBS, 7 May
2010, www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/health/a-brief-history-
of-the-birth-control-pill/480/.
Accessed 15 April 2019.
Nottke, Amanda. “Taming the Cycle: How Does the Pill Work?”
Harvard University, 15 March
2008, sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2008/issue40/. Accessed 15
April 2019.
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/birth-
control-pill
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/birth-
control-pill
http://www.center4research.org/birth-control-pills-need-know/
https://www.womenshistory.org/education-
resources/biographies/margaret-sanger
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/health/a-brief-history-
of-the-birth-control-pill/480/
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2008/issue40/
Last Name 1

10. Student Name
RHET 1302
Dr. Riley
Date
The Rising of Social Media
The topic I am choosing to research and discuss in this paper is
the invention of social
media. I will talk about its creation and, with a transition on
how we know social media today, I
will present recent research on both the positive and negative
effects of social media on children
development and general mental health.
Humans, as a social species, have the need to communicate and
create new relationships
with others. Over the last centuries, communicating over long
distances was especially hard and
people could only rely on written letters that took days, weeks,
or even months to deliver. The
telegraph was later invented which made this communication
over long distances a lot easier.
Telephones and radios were newer important discoveries made
in the 1800s which also

11. contributed to this relay of information between people. From
there, inventions such as
computers in the 1940s, internet in the 1960s, and the first
forms of emails in the 1970s, all
played roles as pieces to render human communication as easy
as possible. It is only 22 years
ago that humans, with this thirst toward facilitating social
communications and building social
connection, invented social media (Henricks, 2013).
Social media, which is defined by a History Cooperative writer
as “the different forms
of online communication used by people to create networks,
communities, and collectives to
share information, ideas, messages, and other content, such as
videos,” was originally created in
1997 by Andrew Weinreich with a social media site called “Six
Degrees” (Keith, 2019). “Six
Last Name 2
Degrees” users were able to create a profile as well as connect
and form new friendships with a
variety of other users for the first time. With the launching of

12. this site, social media as we know
it today was born.
Social media affects society in a huge way today, we see it
everywhere. The newer
generations in particular spend a lot of time on social media
whether it is updating their profile or
using it for mere communication with their friends. Although
some aspects of social media
appear to be positive for the new generations, there is very
recent research in the field of
psychology that suggests a strong negative influence that social
media has on the development of
children such that some government regulations and privacy
laws might be enforced in the next
few years (The Lancet, 2019).
Other recent research looks at the general health within the
social media era (Abroms,
2019) which will wrap up my paper on the rising of social
media.
Abroms, Lorien C. “Public Health in the Era of Social Media.”
American journal of public
health 109.S2 (2019): S130–S131. Web.

13. This academic source, an article written by Abroms in 2019 and
published in the American
journal of public health, describes some recent research
concerning the general health outcomes
within the social media era in which we live in. This source
talks about why it is important to use
the social media we have and check daily as a measure of
promoting positive health outcomes
rather than letting it exploit our health in a negative way. I
could use the information in the paper
as a transition from the body of my paper to my conclusion in
order to make my audience
wonder on where social media is going and how we could use it
in a better and more health
promoting way.
Last Name 3
Hendricks, Drew. “Complete History of Social Media: Then
And Now.” Small Business
Trends, 6 May 2013, smallbiztrends.com/2013/05/the-complete-
history-of-social-
media-infographic.html.

14. This popular source, an article written by Drew Hendricks and
published in an online journal
called Small Business Trends, is interesting because it gives a
lot of background information on
social media and a timeline of how it evolved from the debuts
of the first social media platform,
“Six Degrees,” to where we stand with social media today. This
source will be valuable for the
intro of my research paper as it also briefly talks about the
inventions and discoveries that led to
social media. I want to use this information to create a base of
what I’m talking about and how
social media got to where it is today.
Keith. “The History of Social Media: Social Networking
Evolution!” History Cooperative,
14 Feb. 2019, historycooperative.org/the-history-of-social-
media/.
This article, a popular source, also covers the history of social
media which makes it more of a
backup source and will strengthen the ethos of my paper. The
author of this source, Keith,
decides to start defining what social media is as we know it
today. The definition he provides is
well supported throughout his article which develops credibility

15. for this source. I will use the
definition presented of social media in my paper and develop
my ideas and further research
based on it. I believe that if I talk about the defining factors of
social media, my audience and I
will be on the same page for the rest of my paper. Additionally,
this paper is more recent than the
first which also adds on to the overall credibility of the paper.
The Lancet. “Social Media, Screen Time, and Young People’s
Mental Health.” Elsevier
Science Direct 393.10172 (2019): 611–611. Web.
Last Name 4
This academic source, an article written by The Lancet and
published in Elsevier Science Direct
in 2019, underlines the danger the social media has on our
society. The article mentions deaths
by suicide and other mental health risks that social media brings
to the table. The author also
describes how society has tried to prevent mental health issues
related to social media (in
particular relating it back to an attempt Facebook made in 2017)

16. but that more persistent efforts
need to be made. This research can also be including later on in
my paper when talking about the
negative health aspects that social media has.
Last Name 5
Works Cited
Abroms, Lorien C. “Public Health in the Era of Social Media.”
American journal of public
health 109.S2 (2019): S130–S131. Web.
Hendricks, Drew. “Complete History of Social Media: Then
And Now.” Small Business Trends,
6 May 2013, smallbiztrends.com/2013/05/the-complete-history-
of-social-media-
infographic.html.
Keith. “The History of Social Media: Social Networking
Evolution!” History Cooperative, 14
Feb. 2019, historycooperative.org/the-history-of-social-media/.
The Lancet. “Social Media, Screen Time, and Young People’s

17. Mental Health.” The
Lancet 393.10172 (2019): 611–611. Web.