research paper
Primary Source Project: Guidelines & Detailed Assignment Descriptions
Summer II 2017
This is the primary assignment of the course. I have designed it to give you an opportunity to engage in primary research and develop your own original arguments and narratives about one piece of the past. Throughout the quarter we will all be reading a number of primary sources that provide windows into American history. However, the accounts I’ve selected represent only a small fraction of the many first-person accounts related to this period that exist. To further delve into this rich body of resources, each student will locate an additional primary source and think, research, and write about how it relates to American history and the themes we discuss in class.
Primary sources vary widely in length and form and can be found in a wide variety of places (in libraries and archives and online). Given the wide variety of primary sources available, you should select your source in consultation with your teaching assistant. I am also more than happy to discuss possible sources with you.
Here are a few guidelines to get you started. The source you select:
Must be related to American history before 1877
Must be an authentic, nonfiction account (there are many fictional accounts that authors have written to look and sound like first-person accounts, so be careful)
Must be neither too long nor too short to work with the assignments (detailed below). This will require some judgment, but just try to keep in mind that you don’t want to pick something so long that it will be a strain to read all of it (you probably don’t want to take on more than 200 pages) or so short that you won’t have much to say (a fragment of a letter, for instance, could be tough to work with). Keep in mind that if you need to adjust the length you are welcome to combine a series of letters or to choose an excerpt from a longer source
The teaching assistants and I are eager to help you locate a primary source that will relate to your specific interests. To get you started, here are a few suggestions of places to look:
Harvest/Melvyl catalog search for UC Davis & UC libraries
Many first-hand accounts have been published as stand-alone books or in edited volumes. By using search terms like “memoir,” “diary,” and “letters” paired with terms of interest (ie. “Civil War,” “Indian Removal,” “Slavery,” “colonial women,” etc) you should be able to identify lots of published sources
UC Davis Special Collections
In addition to the first-person accounts published in books that you can find in the library, UC Davis’ Special Collections Library also has unpublished manuscripts that you can consult. These should also come up in a catalog search, but you can also go into Special Collections and consult with librarians there.
Archival websites
A number of national archives and other organizations have digitized primary sources. Here are just a few suggestions:
Library of Congress, digital collection
https://www.loc.gov/collections/
Library of Congress, primary sources in American history
https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/PrimDocsHome.html
Library of Congress, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938
https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/
Library of Congress, American Memory https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
Smithsonian primary sources
http://www.smithsoniansource.org/
National Archives DocsTeach re: American Indians
https://www.docsteach.org/topics/american-indians
National Archives DocsTeach re: Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s)
https://www.docsteach.org/documents?filter_searchterm=&filterEras=3&filterDocTypes=&filter_order=&filter_order_Dir=&rt=MmgC46quF6zL
National Archives DocsTeach re: Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)
https://www.docsteach.org/documents?filter_searchterm=&filterEras=4&filterDocTypes=&sortby=relevance&filter_order=&filter_order_Dir=&rt=Hs94eswcUsRs
National Archives DocsTeach re: Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)
https://www.docsteach.org/documents?filter_searchterm=&filterEras=5&filterDocTypes=&sortby=relevance&filter_order=&filter_order_Dir=&rt=6xrSjHKasmke
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History featured primary sources
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/collections/featured-primary-sources
Discovering Women’s History Online
http://digital.mtsu.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/women
Valley of the Shadow Project, University of Virginia
http://valley.lib.virginia.edu/
Colonial Williamsburg online resources
http://research.history.org/resources/
The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/major.asp
UNC Greensboro, Digital Library on American Slavery
https://library.uncg.edu/slavery/
Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley, digital collections
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/libraries/bancroft-library/digital-collections
I have developed a series of assignments that will allow you to explore different aspects of your account and, ideally, to feed into class discussions to broaden, complicate, and enrich our understanding of American history. Each writing assignment is designed to get you to think more critically about a particular way of analyzing and using your source—by providing a short introduction and identifying secondary sources that you could potentially use to better understand and contextualize it; by providing an overarching analysis of the source in which you muster specific examples to make an argument about its historical significance; and by creating an annotated timeline that situates your source in time and succinctly summarizes historical events and developments. At the end of the semester you will revise and resubmit each of these pieces of writing as part of a final portfolio.
Detailed descriptions of each of the three writing assignments are below. All written assignments should be double-spaced in a reasonable 12 point font. All of your assignments should be turned in in class on the dates indicated below.
You should consult with your teaching assistant (and me as well if you’d like) in choosing your primary source and preparing for each assignment, and to be in touch if you have any questions. We are looking forward to working with each of you as you develop your portfolios and to learning about the histories you reveal through these primary source accounts.
Introductory Paragraph & Bibliography (2 pages) – 5%
Due August 18th
First, in one paragraph, introduce your primary source and make a claim (which you will later develop in your primary source analysis) about why it is a significant source for understanding some aspect of American history. Be sure to answer when, where, why, how, and by whom your source was created (or as many of these questions as it is possible to answer). Identify the historical period and themes that make this an important source.
Second, identify 3 secondary sources that you could use to learn more about your source and write 2-3 sentences describing what each source is about and how it will help you better understand a specific component of your primary source. These can include books, articles, websites, documentaries, or other sources. Some sources will include introductions written by scholars (see, for instance, David W. Blight’s introduction to our edition of Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass). You may include these in your bibliography. To find other sources you will need to do some research. While you are welcome to begin with a google search, you must also at least use the UC Davis library website to search the Harvest/Melvyl catalogs for additional sources. Even better, you can go to the library! One of the best ways to find multiple sources on the same theme is to identify one source that interests you and then go to the stacks and look at what books are adjacent to it on the shelves. You should list your sources in Chicago Manual of Style bibliography format.
Annotated Timeline (2-3 pages) – 10%
Due August 25th
Imagine the Library of Congress is creating a website about your primary source. Create a timeline for use on the site that highlights at least 10 important events, periods, and/or turning points that situate and connect your account and/or its author in American history. Explain the significance of each event/period/piece of media in 3-5 sentences. Be sure to provide full citations (in footnotes using Chicago Manual of Style format) for all information, so that others could use your timeline to find the original source material. It is entirely up to you to decide how to frame the time period of your timeline. It can be as short as a few weeks or a year (for instance if you just want to cover the period covered by the account or during which it was written) or much longer (if you want to cover the author’s entire life or situate your source within a longer historical context). Taken together the events that you select should provide the reader with a sense of how your primary source fits into broader historical narratives and highlight any important transformations that occurred.
Primary Source Analysis (4-5 pages) – 15%
In a 4-5 page essay, introduce your primary source and develop an argument about its historical significance. Your essay should introduce your source and describe when, where, why, how, and by whom it was created (or as many of these questions as it is possible to answer). You should make an argument about the historical significance of your source and what it reveals about American history. To support this argument, you should analyze your source and incorporate specific examples from the source. While extensive secondary research is not required, you will likely want to draw on course materials or some limited secondary research to provide historical context. Be sure to provide footnote citations (in Chicago Manual of Style format) for all evidence drawn from your source and any secondary sources (including course lectures or readings).
Final Portfolio – 20%
The final assignment for the course is to prepare a portfolio of work that you did on your primary source over the quarter. Your portfolio will consist of revised versions of the three writing assignments along with a 1-2 page bullet-point memo summarizing what you have learned about historical analysis and writing. The point of the portfolio is to give you the opportunity to polish and revise your work. In making revisions you should draw on the comments on your work, discussions from class or office hours, and anything else that you learned over the course of the quarter. The memo that accompanies your written work should highlight the improvements you’ve made. These need not reference specific editing changes that would apply to just one assignment (for instance, “I forgot to italicize For Cause and Comrades”) but rather should be specific, but generalizable lessons that you could apply to writing more generally (for instance, “I learned to watch out for passive voice and try to use active verbs,” “I learned proper Chicago Manual of Style footnote format,” or “I incorporated more specific examples from the text to support my analysis.”) The goal of this memo is to get you to think critically about your revisions and how your writing is improving.
