History

HIS354 – Final Exam Paper Option Instructions & Rubric

Due: Wednesday, December 19th at 10am, in hardcopy

In lieu of the third exam, you may opt to write a 5-page research paper in which you analyze a primary source document of your own choosing. Primary sources must be relevant to the course (i.e. deal with an “idea”) but otherwise you are free to choose a text, image, product of popular culture, etc. In your analysis, you will connect your “text” to its historical moment and draw on relevant scholarship to explain its importance. You must notify me in advance of your intent to write the research paper.

In your analysis, you will present a thesis about the meaning of your document. What does it say about its historical moment? What is its historical context? Submission: your paper should be submitted on Wednesday, December 19th, at 10am sharp, at the start of our exam period. You may submit the paper early, either in person to me or in my mailbox in Suite G, but papers delivered to my mailbox must be followed up with an email to me; I will respond confirming receipt of your paper. Your essay should be:

• 5 pages in length, double-spaced in 12-point font • organized and coherent, with an introduction, analysis, and conclusion • include analysis of your primary source supplemented with at least 2 secondary

scholarly sources (the library can help find sources; these can be journal articles, books, chapters from edited anthologies, etc. You should use evidence from the secondary sources to support your argument)

• proof-read for spelling and grammar For Example: on the second exam, one question had a New York Times article dealing with the Scopes trial. If the NYT article was your primary source, your goal in the paper would be to explain the context of the 1920 and ideas about teaching Darwin in public schools, and interpret the article in that light. Your secondary sources could be a book about Scopes and a journal article about religious modernism in the 1920s.

HIS354 Final Paper Rubric Formatting Basics (15 points)

• Was your paper 5 pages in length? • Double-spaced and in a reasonable 12-point font? • Does it have an introductory paragraph and a conclusion? • Organized into clear paragraphs? • Submitted on time and in hardcopy?

Primary Source & Thesis (15 points)

• Did you select and communicate to me an appropriate primary source

text (written document, image, song, etc.)? • Does your paper present a thesis about your source? Does your

argument make clear your source’s relationship to an idea?

Substance (45 points)

• Do you include a discussion of your source itself – what it is, who made

it, when or how it was produced? • Did you analyze your primary source in connection to its historical

moment? • Did you thoughtfully consider your source?

Sources and Citations (20 points)

• Do you appropriately cite your source? • Do you draw on at least two secondary sources in your analysis? • Was the same citation style consistently used, and used correctly?

Copyediting (5 points)

• Is your paper free of spelling and grammatical errors? • Was it proofread for consistency and small mistakes? (These things

matter! Your writing represents you. That includes things like apostrophes, capitalization, and commas.)