Due Oct 23

Primary Source Research Essay

Should Focus on an Aspect of the Broader Topic Covered in Your Group’s Report

8 page (min 2200 word) 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 during the first unit 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.

On the other hand, you may decide to shift away from your unit 1 topic to focus on something you learned about from other students this semester. That’s a bit more work: you’ll need to go read up on prior scholarship. But the written report and bibliography posted by your peers should provide you with a starting point for doing that background research.

Either way, your reading in prior scholars establishes a “They Say” to which your research can respond with new data and new insights. Having mastered prior scholarship, your main 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 fragments: minor sources like ads and articles. 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 probably shouldn’t set out to argue anything too particular, since chances are good that you won’t find the sources you need to argue that particular claim. But this doesn’t mean you’re helpless. 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 upon at least two scholarly secondary sources (journal articles or 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.). If you want to make sweeping claims, you should collect statistically significant collections of primary sources (10-50) from a clearly delimited cache of available documents. For example, you may want to survey all the news articles published on a certain topic during a crucial 2 month period, or perhaps contrast ads from a popular magazine that depict a certain motif published in 1944 with ads with the same motif published in 1951.

Source citation: please use Chicago Style footnotes or endnotes. No Bibliography is necessary.

Revision due midnight Tuesday.

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