Order 868329: Primary Source Analysis Assignments

Primary Source Reading Response Exercises

You will be required to post 2 Primary Source Reading Responses based on the primary sources posted on Canvas. Your job will be to analyze the documents chosen based on the historical context in which they were produced and to generate good questions for classroom discussion. These will be posted on a discussion site in Canvas. A good post will have the spark of genuine inquiry, of someone trying to understand better something they care about. Each response should contain 3 parts:

1 – a brief summary of the argument or relevance of the document/s at hand;

2 – an examination of how these documents support or challenge the main points presented in that week’s readings from the textbook and other secondary sources;

3 – an analytical question of your own devising that will contribute to the discussion of these texts in class. Feel free to base your questions in part on previous documents or previous issues brought up in class.

Guide to reading Primary Sources: Try to approach the primary source documents assigned like a historian would – like they are pieces of a puzzle, the shape of which is not yet entirely clear. Make sure you understand the answers to the following questions for each document before constructing a response and question of your own:

1. What is this source? (e.g. diary, published photograph, etc.)

2. Who created this source? What can we tell about the perspective of the creator(s)?

3. When was this source created? (if this source is un-dated, what kind of clues might you use to determine its approximate date?) How does it reflect the time when it was created? What does it say about the events of the time? What does it suggest about how that time was perceived by the creator? By other people?

4. Why was this source created? What was its purpose?

5. Who is the intended audience? How might the audience have shaped the source? Might an “unintended” audience interpret this source differently than an intended audience would?

6. If a textual source: think carefully about the word choice and phrasing of the document. How does word choice and rhetorical strategy help you to gain more understanding of this document’s meanings?

7. If an image source: think about factors such as framing, focus, intent, emotion.

8. When comparing this source to other available sources, does it tend to reinforce or challenge other messages about this period?

9. As a researcher, what information would I still need to seek in order to better analyze and understand this source?

10. In what way(s) might this source be useful to an inquiry into early American history?

The point is not to answer each of these 10 questions in a report to me, rather to understand the answers to these questions before formulating an analysis of your own.

Your posts should be 500-750 words in length. You will do two such reports over the course of the semester. Divvying up the documents among discussion group members will help all prepare for the quizzes and classroom discussions.