1. You need to complete this task in strict accordance with the detailed Requirements/Guidelines.
Podcast: Initial Topics Selection
This short guide explains the two thematic options for our podcast assignment.
Like with an essay, your podcast needs an argument. You are not simply providing a summary or a description of history. Instead, you are making an argument by using historical evidence.
There are two thematic options for the podcast:
Option 1) Utilizing a single primary source (an historical document or record) from our readings list, you will provide your listeners with a “deep dive” analysis of this single source (e.g. Arthur Graeme West’s The Diary of a Dead Officer (1919) [from Week 3], or the “Oral Histories of Comfort Women” [from Week 11], etc.).
You will want to build an engaging, academic podcast for your listener. How will you introduce and contextualize your primary source and your argument? What do you most want the listener to understand about this primary source? What do you think it most reveals about history?
Option 2) Imagine you are a professional podcaster and your producer has asked you to contribute to a new history podcast series called “Histories of the Unexpected.”
Your task is to do what Dr. Jackson will do with the infamous Hershey’s Kiss ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey%27s_Kisses) during a forthcoming lecture. Take an unexpected, weird, wacky, or offbeat item (something people would think has no history) and then use it to create a bigger and important historical argument about the early twentieth-century world. The story of the humble Hershey’s Kiss, for example, can reveal a much bigger tale about slavery (both historical and modern) on the African Gold Coast, and about entrenched processes of colonialism that continue to this day.
If you choose this option, your podcast should have a title in this format:
“HISTORIES OF THE UNEXPECTED: ________________.”
(E.G. HISTORIES OF THE UNEXPECTED: THE HERSHEY’S KISS)
Sources：
At a minimum, you must engage with :
KPU Library：
https://kpu.ent.sirsidynix.net/client/en_CA/default/search/account?
Account： 100369396
Password： GaoYanPeng_960822
Two primary sources (for example, an historical document, photograph, speech, newspaper article, song, diary, postcard, etc., produced in the time period you are investigating). Here’s a good place to start your search for relevant primary sources: https://libguides.kpu.ca/history/primary. If you have selection Option 1 (of our two thematic options), these two primary sources are in addition to the central primary source that you will select from our syllabus.
Note that our podcast topics should fit roughly within the core time period of HIST 1130 (vaguely from 1900-1945). Of course, you may need to engage with other time periods too, for instance when setting up some historical context or when showing the relevance of the past to today’s world.
In this assignment, you will create a research proposal for a podcast. This will allow me to give you feedback on your ideas before you hand in the actual podcast project later in the semester. Your proposal should be organized as follows:
• In one typed page (double-spaced), tell me what your proposed topic is going to be and develop a historical question that will guide your research and that you will later answer in your podcast. We will go over how to develop a historical question in class, as well as the two thematic options available for the podcast.
• On a second typed page, list two primary sources (sources produced at the time that your topic took place) and two secondary sources (an academic analysis of a topic: an academic book or scholarly article) that will support you in answering your research question. Write one to two sentences justifying why these sources are a good fit for your project. Not all secondary sources are acceptable for this project. We will go over them in class, but in a nutshell, you need to use scholarly historical sources. That means no websites, no blogs, no encyclopedias, and no magazines. Your research proposal may be written in the first-person voice (“For my podcast I am going to…”). Your sources must be formatted according to Chicago style.
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