DOCUMENTS PAPER Overview: The documents
paper, which is the second longer-format assignment of this course, gives us
opportunities to work with the building blocks that form history. By
definition, primary sources are
written documents and non-written objects created by persons living years ago,
which can be used in order to reconstruct the past. Such items allow today’s
readers and view
...[Show More]
DOCUMENTS PAPER
Overview: The documents
paper, which is the second longer-format assignment of this course, gives us
opportunities to work with the building blocks that form history. By
definition, primary sources are
written documents and non-written objects created by persons living years ago,
which can be used in order to reconstruct the past. Such items allow today’s
readers and viewers to connect with the ideas, points of view, lifestyles and
material conditions of earlier generations. Carefully utilized, primary sources
ultimately give users clearer insights into human nature, the practices we do
and the objects we use today. By noting differences and similarities, primary
sources can help us to build an appreciation of diversity and to understand
ourselves and our world better in the present time.
Assignment
goals:
This assignment, weighted as 30% of your
course grade, will look carefully at the primary
document, a source written by a person of an earlier generation and originally
intended (usually) for use by a contemporary.
This paper has
the following objectives in mind:
·
To
unearth lifestyles and worldviews of people from the past, as seen in primary
sources.
·
To
gain skills that can help us to explore documents for history courses.
·
To
see how a study of the past can help us to better understand ourselves today.
You will
summarize a few aspects that you believe to be important from select documents.
Furthermore, your analysis will involve comparing and contrasting selected
aspects of these sources, as well as stating your overall personal opinion
about these sources.
Instructions: Except
for chapters 10 and 11 (which cover content solely or largely relevant to Hist.
110A), select any ONE other chapter (12-21) from Pollard, Concise Edition, Vol.
2, then prepare to cover some of the documents SOLELY from that chapter. (Because
content in each chapter is grouped thematically, you will NOT be allowed to
select documents from more than one chapter. Furthermore, extra credit is not
available for this assignment.) After selecting a chapter, pick ANY THREE
written primary sources from that chapter. All of the source material will be
located at the end of your selected chapter. Written sources will be grouped
under the heading, “Competing Perspectives.”
There are a few
things you should do before examining the written sources. You will need to
know what to look/read for in order to best tackle the written sources. First,
read the introduction to each of the documents you selected. Written by Pollard
and her co-authors, the document introduction will furnish much information:
authorship, purpose of the document, societal conditions during the time the
document was created, and more. Next, take a look at the criteria in “Handling
primary documents,” at the end of this prompt.
Once you’ve
prepped, plunge into the documents. In examining the sources the first time,
keep your eyes open to anything that fascinates you. As this is different for
each person, I will not give you a hard and fast rule about what is
“fascinating.” What you SHOULD do is to jot down anything that YOU find to be
important. The goal here is to select at least three items from each
of your chosen written documents, nine points total that catch your eye and you
believe to be important. (This is the same process as for the God’s Bits of Wood paper.) You may
select up to five items you find to be noteworthy from each of
the documents, but definitely no more than that. Please note: Since you are
reading in order to discuss what interests you, NOT Pollard, you may
ignore the “Questions for analysis” in the written sources section of Pollard.
You may need to
examine each piece about three times. The first
time, read it quickly for general impressions. Don’t be alarmed or
frustrated by passages that you might find to be challenging to understand or
by unfamiliar terminology. After the first run through, jot down any questions
you may have about the piece. During the second
reading, look for content that is clearer and more familiar. This could
include a person’s livelihood, material possessions, religious or philosophical
beliefs, ways of handling the natural environment, forms of conflict
resolution, or anything else to which you can relate in some way. Be sure, as
well, to look for terminology that is spelled similarly to words in present-day
use. The third reading will involve
digging deeper, trying to make sense of what’s not so clear and not as familiar.
Use the third reading to answer any questions you raised at first about the
piece.
Paper
organization:
Following an introduction of a few paragraphs, which will preview for the
reader the content that you will cover, the completed assignment will consist
of the following two sections: (1.) Summation of key aspects of your written
sources, and (2.) Analysis of the written sources, followed by your personal
views of this assignment. By analysis, I
mean that you should compare and contrast the documents with one another. After
this more traditional analysis, finish your paper with your overall thoughts on
your experiences with the sources that you selected. For stylistic reasons and
due to the nature of this assignment, you are encouraged to write with
self-references (“I,” “we,” or “us”) throughout. Be sure to experiment to find
the balance of summation and analysis that works best for you.
Here are the
technical requirements for this assignment. Your paper should be (on average)
about five pages long of text (notations
lengthen the paper by one or two pages.), double-spaced, with twelve-point font
and one-inch margins. Be sure to paginate
(number each page), and write both the class designation and the section number
on the front page (History 110B, and your section number). An optional title
page will not be included in the
total number of pages. (A five page paper is not a title page and four pages of
content, for instance.) To indicate a new section, the title of a section
should appear above the beginning of that section. Avoid large amounts of blank space between sections, as this is bad
formatting! As with the God’s Bits of
Wood term paper, endnotes are REQUIRED. (A bibliography is
optional.) I am somewhat flexible as to the exact page count. But avoid
extremes. It’s unlikely you will be able to do your best work if the prose in
the final paper is under 4.5 pages in length. A paper that is less than four
long pages will be too brief, but one of thirteen or more will need to be
trimmed. Please contact me before the
very last minute if you face any problems regarding this assignment.
Regarding
endnotes: You will notice that Pollard has reproduced primary documents that
were included in the books of other scholars. In order to streamline your
endnotes for the Journal assignment, you will take a simpler, but style-book
correct, way. At the beginning of the summation section of your paper, you will
identify each of the primary sources that you used. You could write something
like this: “In this section, I will be summarizing a few key points from Okuna,
Fifty Years of New Japan and Charles
Darwin, On the Origin of Species.” By
doing this, you are furnishing very clear identification of the sources you’re
using, ones that were reproduced in Pollard, vol. 2. Identifying each source at
the very beginning of the summation section, you will not be compelled to write
complicated endnotes. (Important: this identification at the beginning of the
summation section does NOT replace endnotes!)
Once you do
this, you are now ready to include the endnotes in your paper. For the purposes
of this assignment, your endnotes will take the form of one author and
one book (the same format as for the God’s
Bits of Wood paper). The first note must be written in the long-format
citation and second and subsequent ones done in short-format citation.
Long-format: Elizabeth
Pollard and others, Worlds Together
Worlds Apart, Concise Edition, Vol. 2 (New York and London: W.W. Norton,
2015), __. [Underscored is where the page number goes.
Short-format:
Pollard, Worlds Together, Vol. 2, __.
[The volume number is essential. Vol. 1 is for 110A courses.]
For more
information, please refer to “Endnote formatting 110B sections S17,” found in
the Course Guides folder.
Due
date:
Please turn in your paper NO LATER THAN
Tuesday, April 18 by 6 p.m. Late penalties apply after this.
HANDLING PRIMARY
SOURCES:
There are
several things to keep in mind (but not to write about) when examining and
assessing a primary source. Pay the closest attention to the ones explained
here in depth.
Types
of source:
·
A
law, constitution, pamphlet, treaty, city council proceedings (all for
political history).
·
Court
transcript, judicial ruling, police report, parole officer report (all for
legal history).
·
Map,
soldier diary, strategic and tactical plans, training manual, weaponry, uniform
(all for military history).
·
Business
ledger, contract, tax filing, will, foreclosure records, patent applications,
placards (all for economic history).
·
Lyrics
[especially from protest songs], laws, college catalogues [for curriculum and
types of students], biographies, letters, contemporary new reports [from
television, radio or newspapers], pamphlets, posters (all for social history).
·
Novel,
dance, music, visual art, costume, religious tract, oral traditions, key
religious work, training manual for new converts (all for cultural history).
·
Human/animal
remains; building ruins; slag; tools/weapons; pottery (archaeology)
·
Any
of the above (for environmental history)
Determine
the category of history to which the source is relevant. Political
(constitutional, legal, diplomatic, electoral, criminal-judicial); military;
economic (agricultural, trade, fiscal, transportation, labor, manufacturing);
technological; social (migration, gender, ethnicity, LGBT); cultural (artistic, religious);
environmental. Much of the time, a source will have relevance to at least two
types of history.
Other factors: authorship of
source; bias/perspective; purpose for which the source was created; credibility
of the source.
[Show Less]