history

BOOK REVIEW

Students will select a novel and write a book review. This review should be one-two pages. This novel should consider the timeframe that the course covers. Your essay should include an introduction, body, and conclusion. The review should provide readers with an understanding of what the book is about, how the book speaks to the historical moment, and your critique of the book.

 

HISTORICAL SITE VISIT 

You will select a historical site that highlights a historical event, place, or person (i.e.,  The Frederick Douglass House , https://www.riversdale.org/ , https://www.surrattmuseum.org/ , or https://www.nps.gov/fofo/index.htm) that falls within the timeframe of the course.  You should produce a short PowerPoint presentation, with a minimum of 10 slides,  which emphasize what you learned from visiting the historical site. Consider these questions, what/who was highlighted? What did you learn from the historical site? What did they do well in developing the historical site? What could they have done better? Would you recommend this historical site to learn about this person or event? Please include photographs and any other visuals. 

 

ANALYTICAL ESSAY

You will complete a four-to-five-page essay.  In this essay, you will write about a historical person or event in American history that is portrayed in a Hollywood film. This person or event should fall within the timeframe of the course. Students should use primary (at least two) and secondary sources (at least three) to determine the accuracy of the film. For example, the film First Man was released in 2018. You will view the film and do your own research on Neil Armstrong. In your essay, you should provide a clear and concise history of the life and career of Neil Armstrong based on primary and secondary sources. Then, you will critique the film pointing out any inaccuracy between the film and the historical record. To garner the highest possible score on this essay, you must draft a clear thesis statement in the introduction, and you must substantiate that thesis by referencing and analyzing specific information and ideas from primary and secondary sources. In other words, it will not be enough to simply type, “I think that….” You will have to denote specific details from your sources and explicitly cite the book pages, speeches, documentaries, and/or other sources you will be using to argue why your thesis is correct.  (See additional writing tips below) 

 

 

Citation Guidelines

When researching and writing essays for this class you are required to use and to specifically cite sources. 

·     -Clayborne Carson’s et al. The Struggle for Freedom

·     -Any documents, documentaries, or weblinks 

·     -And any notes that you take during the class lectures.

In general, source citations for this class should be formatted according to MLA format (for a good website that covers MLA style, try the MLA Formatting and Style Guide at the Online Writing Lab at Purdue University – type “Purdue OWL” into Google).  However, in order to keep things simple, here are some basic guidelines to follow when citing sources within your essays for this class:

1.  - Please use in-text citations in your work (see examples below);

2.  -Include a bibliography or a works cited page (but for your final essay that page does not count toward your page requirement);

3.  -Do not provide a citation for every sentence, even if you are paraphrasing extensively. Instead, if all the information in a paragraph is from one source, just provide one in-text citation at the end of the paragraph;

4.  -You need to provide the last name of the author whose work you are using (i.e., Carson or Thompson, not Clayborne or Sharita).

5.  -You MUST make an effort to give credit to those whose work you are using.  Failure to do so is considered plagiarism, and will have a negative impact on your grade.

In-text citations:

MLA format follows the author-page method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the page number(s) from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken must appear in the text. The author's name may appear either in the sentence itself or in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase, but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your paper.