The Term Paper Project is des igned to introduce you to the issues of historical research through practical experience and investigation of topics that are of special interest to you. In the process of defining your research question, evaluating the leading authorities on the topic and providing an analytically rich narration of the events involved you will develop research and writing skills that will have lifelong value.
Your goal will be to produce an historiographically-oriented research paper of about 12 pages (3500 words) as well as a research journal that documents your investigation process. Both the term paper and the research journal will be due at the end of the term. There will be a series of checkpoints along the way to help break up the workload, including a preliminary topic proposal in week 4, a preliminary bibliography in week 7, and an historiographical prospectus in week 10.
You will need to submit a one paragraph preliminary topic proposal during week four of the term. This should be a single paragraph in which you outline (1) What the research question you propose to solve will be, (2) What your question's scope is, including the probable period of time you intend to cover and the variety of historical approach (political, social, gender, cultural, intellectual, economic, comparative, international, biographical, etc.) that you intend to take, and (3) what you think (at least initially) the key historiographical debates and schools of interpretation associated with your topic might be. You may optionally include a list of some primary and secondary sources that you plan to use. The proposal should be e-mailed to me, and a copy placed on the discussion board so that we can see if there are useful overlaps or possible topic collisions. This assignment will be pass/fail.
You may find it helpful to skim through the list of suggested readings at the end of each chapter in the textbook. Are there any books that catch your eye? Another good place to look is in lists of new and recent books on American history offered by leading university presses such as Oxford, Cambridge, Chicago, North Carolina, Virginia, Johns Hopkins, etc.
There are a number of ways that you might identify your research question. Above all, think of an historical issue or event that you wonder about. You might be surprised at the range of topics that historians care about and that have produced fruitful historiographical debates. If you think about any of your favorite activities, there is probably an historical literature about it. Historians have written about sports, leisure, travel, shopping, disease, computers, video games, movies, cemeteries, dating, the college experience, technology, business, suburbs, national parks, hunting, automobiles, the emergence of mega-churches, the immigrant experience, the history of workers, the emergence of conservative and liberal cultural movements, the rise and fall in presidential reputations and just about anything else you could imagine. Although some research questions and topics will need to be narrowed or revised to match the resources in Furman library we have an impressive array of materials that can underpin your project. So begin with a mystery that you find intriguing. A good question might be something like "Is it really true that the authors of the Constitution were really self-interested bondholders who feared the mob's impact on their financial interests?" "Was the early environmental movement really driven by the timber and mineral interests? or "Did the counter-culture movement of the 1960s really represent a rejection of American values or rather was it part of America's 'orthodoxy of dissent?" A very common question for historians is simply a diagnostic query such as "where did that come from?" or "why did that happen?"
You may find it helpful to skim through the list of suggested readings at the end of each chapter in the textbook. Are there any books that catch your eye? Another good place to look is in lists of new and recent books on American history offered by leading university presses such as Oxford, Cambridge, Chicago, North Carolina, Virginia, New Mexico, Yale, etc.
You will be required to keep an itemized research journal as you do your research which must be submitted along with your final paper. My strong preference is that you use a digital journal such as www.livejournal.com or www.blogger.com. As a minimum in this diary you will need to list
Your goal as a researcher should be to identity the most authoritative sources you can find for your topic. There is no magic formula for the number of sources you should use. Instead, you should seek to locate as many of the most definitive and relevant sources for the topic that you can given the time you have available for the project. Your final bibliography should be a list of the most definitive resources that are available in Furman's library and its digital resources. Note that this will need to include print as well as digital resources. Papers with only digital sources are likely to be considered incomplete or even unfinished
You should research the topic from as many angles as possible. Be sure to investigate general treatments of the era in which your event is situated. If, for example, you were researching the strikes of 1877, one of the first things you should look for is a treatment of the 1870s as a whole, of the Reconstruction period, and of the so-called "Gilded Age." Doing a date-based subject search ("United States - History - 1865-1877 for example) should help you to identify a number of relevant works. Nearly every topic also has biographical dimensions. You should locate whatever biographical information you can on the people involved in shaping your topic. For most subjects there are also topical or categorical histories that may be of interest. For example, if your research question involves debates about a particular historical site, looking into the broader histories of tourism, of historic preservation, and of historical memory, and of specific communities or states, may be of interest. Common categories or sub-genres for this approach might include legal history, immigration history, labor history, diplomatic history, local history, material culture, African American history, Abolition history, women's history, intellectual history, western history, southern history, urban history, religious history, and histories of states and communities. Once you have identified these works, use the index and mine the footnotes and bibliographies to see what sources they considered to be authoritative. The commercial bookseller sites like Amazon.com, Borders.com, and BarnesandNoble.com can sometimes be useful for building your bibliographies too, particularly their "customers" who bought this book also bought..." recommendations. Finally, make sure that you have investigated all of the relevant resources and research tools that we used in the library exercise at the beginning of the term.
Many resources will not meet the requirements of the assignment.
Even some articles available on JSTOR, First Search or Infotrac may not be scholarly enough or appropriate to your topic. Consult with me if you have doubts about the validity of your information.
Your final bibliography will be submitted with your term paper essay at the end of the term. This preliminary version should be your "first draft" of that bibliography, based on the work you have completed so far. As much as possible it should represent a full list of the most current and authoritative works relevant to your research question.
The bibliography should be typed and should include reasonable margins for comments. Notes should be formatted using the Humanities B: style of Chicago Manual references. Each reference should be single-spaced, and should be separated from other notes by a single blank line. Primary Sources should be organized separately from secondary sources. Within each group, sources should be organized alphabetically by author's last name. For items such as encyclopedia entries or short biographies that come from a larger collection I would like a separate citation for each specific source whose content or focal point is distinct. For example, if your project was an exploration of Jeffersonian and Madisonian visions of the founding, there would be separate citations in your bibliography for the biographies of Jefferson and of Madison that you consulted from the American National Biography.
Note that your bibliography and research journal should correspond with each other. I should be able to see from your journal how you located each and every source, and should get some basic sense from the journal of why each particular source was included in the bibliography.
This essay should be a summary of the major interpretive viewpoints related to your research question. It should provide a sense of the range of differences among scholars but should also include consideration of their shared values and consensus interpretations. In revised form this prospectus will become the literature review section of your final paper. It should be around two to three pages long, typed and double-spaced, with ample margins for comments.
In formal terms the prospectus should have the following elements:
You should be especially conscious to avoid plagiarism on this assignment. Please review the plagiarism guidelines on the course website. It is presumed that you understand these policies and the relevant guidelines in the university's plagiarism handbook. For more technical issues you will find it helpful to browse Barzun & Graff, The Modern Researcher and Kate L. Turabian, A manual for writers of term papers, theses, and dissertations. for suggestions about proper research methods and attributions.
All papers must be footnoted correctly using the Chicago "humanities N: note" style of footnoting. Incorrectly footnoted papers will cause you to fail the assignment automatically.
There will be several intermediate steps for the project. The preliminary research question proposal will be due at the end of week four. A preliminary bibliography will be due at the end of week seven. An historiographical summary and issues statement will be due week ten. The preliminar bibliography and historiographical piece will be considered drafts rather than final documents. You must turn them in by the appropriate deadlines in order to pass the overall assignment but they will receive comments and suggestions for revision and clarification rather than a formal letter grade.
Your final term paper and your research journal are due at the beginning of class on Wed. Nov. 28. You must also submit an electronic copy of the paper to me viai e-mail. Finished papers will vary in length but will typically run about 12 pages or 3500 words, plus documentation and references.
Essays need to be type-written and double-spaced, with a one inch margin minimum on all edges for comments. No special binding nor cover sheet should be used. I have no preference between footnotes or endnotes but all of your references must be in correct historical format. Since you will be submitting your research journal no additional bibliography or works consulted page is required. In addition to the printed copy you must also send me an electronic version of the paper in an e-mail attachment.
Take a look at Strunk's Elements of Style. You may find other useful suggestions by looking for "online writing centers" on the web and consulting their writing tips pages. You may also find it helpful to consult with the staff of the CCLC in the basement of the library.
Below I have listed a few of my personal peccadilloes about style and grammar. You are advised to double-check your papers for such things and remove them, lest red ink flow like water.
All research papers must use standard historical footnoting. Entries and papers using parenthetical footnotes will not pass the assignment. Be aware that footnotes are numbered sequentially by footnote order in the text, not as numbers referring to a specific book. If in doubt, include the reference or check with me. See the Chicago Manual Brief Guide for specifics. We will be using the Humanities N: style of footnotes or endnotes. Ignorance of Furman's plagiarism policy or of documentation requirements will not be considered a legitimate excuse for improperly cited papers. These will simply be failed, and in a flagrant case may lead to failure of the course.
Some Additional Footnoting Suggestions: You should consolidate references where possible. In most cases there should be only one footnote for each paragraph. Separate multiple sources with semi-colons. The main exception to this rule is that any direct quote should be cited at the end of the quote itself. Try to avoid quoting sources that have been quoted in another work. If you cannot locate the original source, be sure that your quote is cited correctly. Citation of materials that are not in Furman's library or accessible through Furman's resources will be considered automatic evidence of plagiarism. You will fail the assignment if this turns up.