Guidelines attached
HIS 141 Professor Gonzales Guidelines for the Primary Source Analysis Paper Proposal General Information For this assignment you will write a short (1-2 pages double spaced) proposal that describes what you will write about in your primary source analysis paper. Your proposal should be straightforward. Some introductory or contextual information is good, but it does not need to be exhaustive. Therefore, you do not need to write a long introduction or begin your proposal with a lot of background information or long narratives. Rather, you will simply provide basic information (specifics are below) about the paper you plan to write. The two most important criteria you need to adhere to are as follows. First, make sure that your paper is clear and specific – meaning you have specifically provided the information requested. Second, be certain that your paper provides all of the information requested below. For the first point, keep in mind that you need to identify specific archives and/or collections that you will use as sources for your paper. You cannot, for example, write that you will use “the internet,” or “archives” for your paper. Writing such things will substantially lower your grade on this paper. Grading This proposal will be graded as a completion/non-completion assignment. This means that if you complete the paper, you don’t hand it in late, and you fully and thoroughly provide all of the information requested, then you will receive full credit. When grading the paper, we will determine if you thoroughly provided all of the information requested. If information is either missing, or is insufficiently provided, your grade on the proposal will be lowered. How much it is lowered depends on the degree to which information is missing or is lacking in specific detail. Due Date Proposals are due at the beginning of your recitation on Friday, October 16, 2020. Late Proposals All late proposals will be reduced by one third grade per day late (this means per 24 hour period late, not per class meeting). For example, an assignment that is one day late that received a grade of B+, would be reduced in grade to a B. As noted above, your proposal is due at the beginning of your recitation. It will be considered one day late beginning immediately upon the end of the collection of the proposals. Required Information to be Included in the Proposal: 1. Identify a topic a. Example: I want to explore children’s consumption of alcohol in the early United States. 2. Identify the question or problem your paper will address a. Example: I want to determine whether there were significant differences in what type of alcohol and how much alcohol children drank in comparison to adults. 3. Explain why answering your question is important - what will we learn by answering it, what is significant about answering your question? a. Example: Knowing if there were differences between children and adults in relation to drinking patterns might shed light on why and when Americans started to view alcohol consumption as something that could be socially problematic. 4. Describe what sources you will use to answer your question. a. Example: I will read documents from archival collections in The American Antiquarian Society, the RI Historical Society, and the Archives of the New York Times. Remember, the above is just a list of the basic information you need in your proposal. You can include any other pertinent information. Also, when you write your proposal, you should write it out in essay form – do not write your proposal as a list of numbered answers! ETHN 112A/HIUS 108A Primary Source Analysis Paper Assignment Prof. Gonzales HIS 141 Fall 2020 Overview This assignment is designed to give you the opportunity to work with historical sources and to engage in historical research. This assignment will provide practice decoding primary sources, and help you to develop critical thinking and writing skills, a capacity to see the world from others’ points of view, and hone your ability to develop an argument. To complete this assignment, you will read primary source documents and then write an analysis based on those sources. Your task is to pose a question or problem about the history you’re studying and then to develop an answer to your question/problem. You do this by using the primary sources as evidence to support your answer. This paper will be 3-4 double spaced pages in length. You will choose your own primary sources. There are three rules which you must follow in choosing sources: 1. They must be from the Early American period defined here as between the years 1550-1865. 2. They must originate from the North American continent north of Mexico, the Caribbean, or the Atlantic World. 3. They must be about “everyday” life. You cannot write about well-known, seminal historical events or famous historical individuals. For example, you cannot write about events like the American Revolution, the Salem Witch Trials, the Boston Tea Party, George Washington, Abe Lincoln, etc. Sources You can find sources in local archives, through online archives, and through the online primary sources databases available through the URI Library Webpage located at https://uri.libguides.com/az.php. The following specific databases taken from the larger list on URI’s page are particularly helpful. Here they are: 1. African American Newspapers Series 1 and 2 https://uri.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://infoweb.newsbank.com/?db=EANX&d_collections=EANAAA|EANAAA2 2. American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals https://uri.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&custid=s9006711&groupid=main&profile=ehost&defaultdb=h9j,h9h,h9i,h9k,h9m 3. American History, 1493-1945 (Adam Matthew) https://uri.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://www.americanhistory.amdigital.co.uk/ 4. American Indian Newspapers (Adam Matthew) https://uri.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://www.americanindiannewspapers.amdigital.co.uk/ 5. Archive of Americana https://uri.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://infoweb.newsbank.com/?db=AOFA 6. Slavery, Abolition, and Social Justice (Adam Matthew) https://uri.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://www.slavery.amdigital.co.uk/ 7. Colonial America (Adam Matthew) https://uri.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://www.colonialamerica.amdigital.co.uk/ The above represent only some of the databases of primary sources available to you. Be sure to explore what interests you. Whatever sources you choose to use, your task in this paper is to develop an insightful comment about the past that is captured in the primary sources you read. These sources are part of the historical record and as such provide windows to the past, which should enable you to create a comment or argument about what you are perceiving in the sources. Your paper should convey your insight or comment in a clear, precise, and debatable thesis statement. The paper should then use textual evidence taken from your primary sources in order to create supporting arguments that work to uphold the validity of your thesis statement. In other words, your paper should be the written form of the thinking that you did between reading the primary sources and developing insight about the past that those sources reflect. Another way to describe what you need to do for this paper would be to state that you need to read the sources, think about what those sources reveal to you about the past, and then write a paper that conveys what you see from the sources and how/why you see it as you do. Guidelines 1. Do not begin your research with an answer in mind! Begin with a question, then find an answer through reading your sources. Similarly, do not create an answer to your research question and then cherry pick evidence from the sources to support it. 2. Create a clear (easy to understand), precise (contains only one argument), and debatable (one could disagree with your idea) thesis statement. The thesis is your answer to the question you have posed. 3. Avoid writing a thesis statement that conveys something that is super obvious, or that can be taken for granted. For example, don’t write a thesis like “Slavery was vital to English colonization in the New World.” 4. Most of your paper should be your analysis of the sources. So, don’t just fill up your paper with quotations from the sources. There is no exact number of quotations you need. Use as many as you need to support your argument without simply filling your paper with quotations. You should use your quotations to build arguments. In other words, use textual evidence taken from your primary sources to support your thesis. 5. Do not summarize the known history – focus on proving your argument through analysis. 6. There is no exact number of primary sources you should read, but 10 is a good starting point. The basic rule is that you must read enough sources so that you can understand the past well enough that you can make an argument about the question or problem you have posed. 7. Make sure that the arguments in the body of your paper all work to support (and therefore connect back to) your thesis. 8. Use 11 or 12 point font and 1” margins. 9. Create footnotes using Chicago Style citation. Any time you quote your sources, you need a footnote. To learn how to use Chicago Style visit this link https://uri.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/book/ed17/frontmatter/toc.html Due Dates This assignment has three components, each with its own due date. These are: 1. Proposal, due October 16, 2020 2. Rough Draft, due November 1, 2020 3. Final Draft, due on December 14, 2020 The Proposal and Rough Drafts are due at the beginning of your recitation, and the Final Draft is due at the start of our lecture on the last day of class. Papers turned in after an assignment is collected will be subject to a penalty of one third of a grade off for each day that they are late (meaning a B paper that was one day late, for example, would fall to a B-). Your paper is considered a whole day late immediately after collection of the assignment has been completed in recitation (for the Proposal and Rough Draft) and at the end of lecture at 1:50pm (for the Final Draft).