Due Nov 6
Historical Essay
7 page essay on a historical event or cultural phenomenon from 1960s America. Assemble two distinct bodies of evidence, each consisting of a group of closely related primary sources. Use these fragments of the past to complicate and enrich our understanding of the topic you’re writing on.
Consider using something you learned from course readings as a starting point. For example, having learned from prior scholars that event X was a turning point in historical process Y, you might decide to read up in contemporary news coverage of that event, to deepen your understanding of why X had such a vital impact. In essence, our readings in prior scholars establishes a “They Say” to which your research can respond with new data and new insights. Having mastered prior scholarship, your challenge is to identify bodies of evidence that provide you with something to say in response to those scholars, an “I Say” argument.
A body of evidence can be defined by reference to a single very rich source, like a novel or movie. Or it can involve assembling multiple minor sources like news articles or even magazine advertisements. I’d like to see you develop two distinct bodies of evidence, allowing your essay to approach its topic from two distinct angles.
You will probably find that the evidence at hand determines what your essay can argue. This means you shouldn’t decide what you want to argue before you’ve completed your research. Canny historians frame research questions in terms of sources that they know lie ready to hand. Because it’s easy to get access to old magazine issues on Google, and full historical runs of five mainstream newspapers are available through the BU library portal, you should consider carefully what kinds of research questions these kinds of sources are good at answering.
Source Requirement: your essay should draw significantly on one or two secondary sources (journal articles or scholarly books) and two bodies of evidence, each consisting of one major primary source (a novel or movie) OR 4-6 minor ones (pictures, speeches, policy memos, news articles, advertisements, etc.). You might even consider collecting a statistically significant collection of primary sources (10-50) from a clearly delimited cache of available documents—such as, for example, all the news articles published on a certain topic during a crucial 2 month period.
Source citation: Chicago Style footnotes or MLA parenthetical citations.
Due midnight Sunday.
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