Choice of Topic: For this assignment, you will have the choice between 1) designing and conducting a test of an ethnobotanical theory of medicinal plant use, 2) choosing a particular illness and comparing how it is perceived and treated across three cultures, including your own culture. For this second option, at least one of the cultures must use medicinal plants to some degree to help treat the illness. Your third option is to, 3) propose your own topic. To pursue this third option, you must receive prior permission from the instructor for your proposed topic. Length: For undergraduate students, the paper needs to be 8-12 double-spaced pages. For graduate students, the paper should be 10-20 double-spaced pages. Author contributions, References, Appendices, photos and figures do not count towards this required length. Citations: Please use APA style citations. You will need in-text citations, as well as a References section at the end of the paper that lists the full citations for all of your sources. For undergraduates, you need at least 8 citations that are peer-reviewed articles, books, or book chapters. For graduate students, you need at least 12 citations that are peer-reviewed articles, books, or book chapters. There is no requirement for the number of other types of sources, such as websites, blogs, or reports. Any number of this other types of sources is acceptable for both undergraduates and graduate students.Sections for topic choice 2, cross-cultural comparison of an illness: Title, Authors, Abstract, Main body, Conclusion, References. Title: Your title can be a statement of your main argument or can describe your topic Authors: List first and last name of author(s) Abstract: Summarize the paper overall using one or two sentences to convey each of the following: the broader context of culture and health, your chosen illness and the cultures you compared, the evidence you used, your main argument about what the cross-cultural comparison reveals about cultural differences in illness or healing or what it reveals about the use of plants as medicine, and the significance of your findings). Aim for 150-250 words. Introduction: This section can be thought of as a longer or expanded abstract. It should include: a desсrіption of why cultural difference matters in the context of illness, health, or healing, an introduction the illness and the cultures you selected, as well as your main argument or thesis. This section should be at least 1.5 double-spaced pages long. Healing [insert name of illness] across cultures: Here you will have a subsection for each of the cultures you selected that has a separate heading. In each subsection, be sure to: describe the culture you have chosen, how the illness is perceived in that culture, with reference to personalistic, naturalistic, or biomedical ethno-etiologies, as well as how the illness is treated in that culture, including the use of medicinal plants in at least one of the cultures. You do not need to include different ethno-etiologies in your three selected cultures, but you may want to do so in order to expose greater cross-cultural difference. Also, include at least one picture for each culture that helps the reader understand your desсrіptions. You may wish to include information about within culture diversity, or the multiple modes of healing with each culture, but this is not required. You are welcome to compare and contrast across the three cultures here in this section, but that is not required. This section should be at least 3 double-spaced pages, excluding the three photos. Please note that you can acquire information about these cultural differences through published sources, such as publications and sources online (most common approach), or you could choose to interview people locally who have difference cultural traditions related to healing this illness. [Main argument]: The title for this section is in brackets here because you should create a title for this section that reflects your main argument. Here is where you will state your main argument, which should be related to what this comparison across cultures tells us about the importance of culture to illness and healing, and/or what the differences in the ways plants are used to treat the same illness across cultures tells us about medicinal plant use. This section should include providing evidence to support your main argument. You may wish to have two or three pieces of evidence from the research you summarized in the section above or elsewhere to support your main argument. You may wish to create subsections for each piece of evidence you will describe. You can also compare and contrast the three cultures here, if that is helpful to your argument. You may also talk about your ideas for follow-up studies, but this is not required. This section should be at least 3 double-spaced pages. Conclusion: Summarize the main arguments of your paper again and the significance of these findings. This should be at least one paragraph of at least 4 sentences. Author contributions: If you worked with a classmate, here you will describe, in detail, what each person contributed. This needs to include, at a minimum: who came up with the project idea, who found the sources for the paper, how the reading of the sources was shared, and how the writing of the paper was split up. If contributions are very unequal, it is possible that the student who contributed less would receive a lower score. An unequal distribution of work would not lower the score of the student who contributed more. References. List the full citation for all references that you cited within the text. This should be in APA format. Any length is fine as long as you meet the requirements for the number of peer reviewed articles, books, or book chapters stated above.