The final paper is due before class April 15.
Purpose:
The purpose of this assignment is to have you practice the work of a historian while demonstrating college level writing to meet the state’s Gordon Rule requirement. That means identifying a historical question, searching for original sources (that is, sources produced at the time) that help to answer the question, reading secondary materials (that is, things written after the fact by a historian or other) and putting your information in its broader context, and then writing a persuasive argument convincing me of your conclusions and your answer to the original question.
Nuts and Bolts:
- Paper will be a minimum of five complete pages of text, excluding bibliography and/or endnotes.
- See syllabus for rules regarding late papers
- The paper will be typed and double spaced with one inch margin. Times new roman 12pt font.
- Keep a back up copy. Do not wait until the last minute. Computer problems or other things that pop up at the last minute are not acceptable excuses for late papers. You have all semester to work on this project and in order to submit quality work, you need to be working on it all semester.
- No title pages.
Sources
Papers should make use of a minimum of three secondary (peer reviewed) and two primary sources. The more primary sources the better.
- At least one of your secondary sources MUST be from a peer reviewed article accessed via the library database, JSTOR. Your other 2 secondary sources may be either from JSTOR or a scholarly (peer reviewed) book or article from another source. If you are not sure if your book/article is scholarly (peer reviewed), ask me or a librarian.
- JSTOR is accessible via the databases on the libraries website. If you don’t know how to access it, please ask either me or the librarians for assistance. I have created a narrated screencast in the “Everything You Need to Know About the paper, peer review, and plagiarism” module that walks you through how to access and search JSTOR.
- Do not use current popular press magazine articles for secondary sources.
- Do not use encyclopedia articles, dictionary entrees etc. as one of your minimum sources. Encyclopedia articles should never be a significant source and can only count as extra sources.
- No websites unless approved by me in advance
- In your bibliography, break your primary and secondary sources into two different sections.
- Your text does not count as one of the required minimum sources.
- Use of AI of any kind for any reason is not allowed and will result in you earing a zero for the paper.
Topics
- This paper should be on a question about some aspect of some part of Western civilizations during the period covered by the class. They must be a topic that falls within the scope of this course. If your paper does not, you will earn an automatic zero.
- This paper is meant to address a historical question; that is, one that can be answered with historical evidence. Papers should not address rhetorical or philosophical questions. Nor should they ask “what if.” Avoid papers that seek to prove the importance of some event. Importance is ambiguous, hard to prove, and often too deeply enmeshed in other issues to establish in a semester-long project.
- This paper is meant to provide an analysis of evidence. It should NOT be just a story or just a narrative.
- Please read the resources provided in the Papers module, as they explain how to get started with your paper.
- We will discuss in more depth the nature of proper topics in class.
Evaluation
The components which will be taken into consideration in the grade are:
- Strength of thesis
- Whether thesis is argued successfully in the paper
- adequacy and use of sources including proper documentation
- writing, grammar, and ability to express yourself
- organization and overall presentation
- If you do not have footnotes (or endnotes) and a bibliography, it is plagiarism and an automatic zero for the paper.
- If you do not have a thesis statement, the highest grade that your paper can earn is a 50.
- Issues with your sources not meeting the requirements will also result in significant penalties.