Assessment
Assessment Schedule
Assessment schedule:
| Assignment: |
Word Length: |
Due Date: |
% of Final
Mark: |
| Tutorial Participation |
|
|
10% |
| In-class debate |
|
Week 13
(Oct. 25) |
5% |
| Essay Proposal & Bibliography |
500 words |
Tues 28 August |
10% |
| Essay |
2000 words |
Tues 2 Oct |
40% |
| Take Home Exam |
2000 words |
TBA |
35% |
Hand in all written work, with a History Department yellow
cover sheet, at the SOPHI office.
Tutorial Participation
Prepare for tutorials by reading and reflecting on the assigned
texts. Additional reading will help you to understand and
contextualise the required reading.
In tutorials you will be assessed on your contribution to
the learning environment of the classroom. This includes a
willingness to speak, and to listen. You are also encouraged
to ask each other questions.
As the semester progresses, discussion will move beyond the
specific topic of the week to relate to earlier discussions
and to explore the broad themes of the course.
Attendance at tutorials is required. A record is kept of
tutorial attendance. The History Department expects a minimum
of 80% attendance at tutorials. Tutorial attendance that falls
below 80% in this course may be penalized and any student
whose attendance record is less than 50%, for whatever reason,
will be considered automatically not to have fulfilled the
requirements of the course.
In-class debate: American
Empire: A Force for Liberty or Tyranny?
Your tutor will divide you into groups. Speak as a group,
with one person introducing and concluding, and each other
person presenting a piece of evidence to make your argument.
You may find that adopting a character is the easiest way
to do this – introduce yourself in character and tell
your story (quickly!) in a way that proves your side’s
case.
Essay Proposal - 500 words,
due Tuesday 28 August
For information on choosing a topic, see below.
Your proposal must be a formally written piece of work, not
just your random jottings.
Include a bibliography. It doesn’t need to be perfect,
but must include enough details so that if someone else wanted
to find the material, he or she could do so. For starters,
use the lists of additional reading in the tutorial guide
below.
Try to map out your essay, even if you have not quite come
to grips with all the primary material you will use.
• What QUESTION will you address? (This is very
important. If you do not have a question, your essay will
tend to describe events rather than analyze them for meaning.)
• What points will you make to answer the question?
What evidence (primary sources) will you analyze in order
to argue those points?
Good history essays:
-
rely on primary sources as evidence to demonstrate
the points that they make. Citing the conclusions of other
historians does not prove a point.
-
use footnotes, directing your reader to your evidence,
are not an anachronistic quirk of the discipline of history.
Just as they are the base of the page, so too should they
be the basis of your argument;
-
contextualise the argument with respect to the arguments
of other scholars and established fields of inquiry; and
-
are well organised and well written.
The point of the essay proposal is to encourage you to locate
the material you need to write your essay early in the
semester. This includes both primary sources/evidence
and historians’ interpretations/secondary sources.
Your proposal should include:
-
a specific research question that you plan to address;
-
an outline of the argument that you plan to make; and
-
an annotated bibliography of:
-
at least two major primary sources (more if you have
found them) or several shorter ones;
-
three secondary sources, not including textbooks, encyclopaedias
or websites.
It may be difficult at this early stage, but the more specific
and detailed you can be, the more feedback your marker can
give you.
How do you pick a research question?
Start with a broad area and narrow down your inquiry to a
particular topic.
Some ideas for broad fields from which to pick a research
topic (in no particular order):
-
the appropriateness of the categories, ‘empire’
and ‘imperialism’ to describe US power;
-
the role of the adoption of children in US interventions
overseas;
-
the role of missionaries in the spread of US ideals and/or
culture;
-
the role of economic theory in the development of an
imperialist ideology;
-
the relationship between continental expansion and overseas
empire;
-
the role of media in mediating public opinion and government
policy;
-
the response of African Americans, labor activists or
religious groups to imperial expansion;
-
the development and tradition of American anti-imperialism;
-
the relationship between American foreign policy and
international bodies such as the League of Nations and
United Nations;
-
the role of human rights ideas and discourses in justifying
overseas intervention;
-
some aspect of American culture that has been remade
in the wake of overseas intervention;
-
the role of photography, and spectacle, in creating and/or
justifying imperialism.
Next, you need to come up with a question to answer. In order
to do this, you should find primary sources relating to the
broad field that you’ve chosen.
For examples of the types of questions you
could address, have a look at the website for HSTY1076 (American
History from Lincoln to Clinton) at http://teaching.arts.usyd.edu.au/history/hsty1076/questions.html
Note that all those questions ask you something about the
primary sources themselves. What do they reveal about X, or
what do they suggest about Y’s experience of Z? This
is very important: frame your question so that it requires
you to analyse the primary evidence in order to say something
about a topic related to one of the themes of the course.
How do you find sources?
Years ago I would have said, consult the bibliographies of
historians’ books and articles, read the primary sources
on which they rely, and use them to point to other, similar
items.
Now, however, hundreds of good collections of primary sources
are on the internet. The ease with which you can access them
means that you can be creative about both the topic and the
types of evidence you use. As well as contemporary newspaper
reports, for example, you might consider government records,
letters, memoirs, diaries, paintings and other visual arts,
film, advertisements, cartoons and oral histories.
I will link some to the website in the first few weeks of
semester. In the meantime, use search engines to find oral
history collections and collections of visual evidence. For
example, have a look at the American Memory website
at the Library of Congress: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/
Examples of collections are:
More ideas for primary sources, in no particular order:
• Runs of American magazines/journals. You could
examine their editorial stance on American foreign policy
or do a cultural analysis of their contents, eg, advertisements
(as Kramer does in his article we read for week 5)
o 20th century: Time, Life, Newsweek, Atlantic Monthly,
Harpers, etc. Fisher has most of these though you may
have to request from storage.
o 19th century: “Nineteenth Century in Print”:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/moahtml/snctitles.html
• Newspapers
o Fisher Library has access to full runs of the New
York Times (since 1851), Chicago Tribune
(since 1849), and Wall Street Journal (since
1889). The Washington Post goes back to 1974.
These are online and fully searchable. Go via the database
called Proquest
Historical Newspapers.
o Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1841-1902: http://www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/eagle/index.htm
o Newspapers, 1900-1910, for California, District of
Columbia, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Utah, and Virginia:
http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/index.html
• NGOs with domestic and international programs,
such as Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie
Corporation (organizations such as these published reports
or magazines annually or quarterly. The Usyd library system
has them, though you may have to request them from Storage.
They usually take a day to come to the library of your choice.)
• United States Department of State Papers relating
to the Foreign Relations of the United States (available
for 1861-1960 - http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/FRUS/About.shtml).
An amazing resource, arranged by year, and then by country.
• Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html
• For primary sources from popular culture see
o Library of Congress American Memory Collection, containing
millions of scanned primary documents: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
o “Authentic History”:
http://www.authentichistory.com
• Presidential speeches
• The Avalon Project at Yale Law School: Documents
in Law, History and Diplomacy (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm)
• Protest music
• Travel accounts
For literally dozens more sites, see those listed on Frances
Clarke’s comprehensive page: “Finding Primary
Sources in American History from Australia” (http://teaching.arts.usyd.edu.au/history/hsty3093/sources.html).
More and more goes up online every day, so feel free to browse
online.
If you have questions or would like suggestions feel free
to email Clare.
You may also find similar items collected in books in Fisher
Library. Use the keyword and subject search function to look
for them.
What about historians’ interpretations/secondary
sources?
Your essay proposal ought also to identify the best and most
influential historical interpretations of the field/question
you have chosen. Note that we can help you especially with
this part of the task.
-
Use the Fisher Library catalogue to look for books and
articles. Use keyword and subject searches.
-
Also use the database link to search the Expanded Academic
Index.
-
Browse through Journal Storage at http://www.jstor.org
and the journals at
http://www.historycooperative.org.
-
Also look up the list of books on Fisher Reserve by entering
the course code into the search box.
- Use the list of recommended
reading.
For more on how to write essays, see the
HSTY1045 essay writing guide, which you can download from
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/history/ugresources.html
or use online at:
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/history/1045_Guide/index.html
Think of the essay proposal as a chance to float your
ideas with Clare or your tutor, who will be able to help
you identify the primary and secondary sources you need
to write a good history essay.
Please attach the marked proposal to your essay when
you submit it.
Essay - 2000 words, due Tuesday
2 October
Writing and Submitting your Essay:
When you hand in your essay, please attach the marked
proposal, including the preliminary
bibliography.
All essays must be correctly footnoted and accompanied
by a bibliography.
Consult the Guide to Essay Writing prepared by the teachers
of HSTY1045 at
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/history/1045_Guide/index.html
It includes very helpful information on preparation
and writing of essays as well as notes on how to cite
primary and secondary material.
Formatting your essay:
Use an easy-to-read font
with serifs, size 12. Suggestions are Times
New Roman, Palatino, Garamond or Book Antiqua. Double
space your work and leave a generous margin on
at least one side of the page for comments.
Please staple the essay with a History Department cover
sheet, available from the SOPHI Office or online via
the History Department homepage. Submit it at the SOPHI
office.
Examination: date TBA
You pick two questions. Write 1,000 words on each. Type
and double-space your responses. Submit to SOPHI office,
all together with a cover sheet on the top.
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