HIST102

Short Research Papers, Due weeks 3 and 6, 3-5 Pages

This document provides important information to help you write a great research paper. You must

use the Chicago style for citations and bibliography. See examples below. You must use credible

academic sources. See information below.

Resources to help you write a great research paper:

 This document

 Chicago citation examples below and under course policies, Newsletter 1.

 Guidance in the APUS library.

 Examples of great student papers in the APUS library and in the course.

Possible Topic Categories

Please narrow down the topic once you select a category. For example, instead of Grant as

President, write about corruption in the Grant administration. The topic selected must be

substantially different than the one you write about in your short paper. This list is not all inclusive.

1. Grant as President

2. “Jim Crow”

3. Boss Tweed

4. J.P. Morgan

5. The Transcontinental Railroad

6. The Steel Industry

7. J.D. Rockefeller

8. The American Labor Movement

9. The New Immigration

10. Booker T. Washington

11. The Growth of American Cities

12. The Suffrage Movement

13. The Indian Wars

14. The Settlement of the West

15. The Populist Movement

16. William Jennings Bryan

17. The Spanish American War

18. Theodore Roosevelt

19. The Conquest of the Philippines

20. Theodore Roosevelt and the Monroe Doctrine

21. The Building of the Panama Canal

22. The Great White Fleet

23. The Conservation Movement

24. Woodrow Wilson

25. The United States in World War I

26. The Sinking of the Lusitania

27. Wilson’s Fourteen Points

28. Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference

29. The United States and the League of Nations

30. The Roaring Twenties

31. Prohibition

32. Herbert Hoover

33. The Scopes Monkey Trial

34. The Rise of Professional Sports

35. The Stock Market Crash of 1929

36. Interwar U.S. Foreign Policy

37. The Washington Naval Treaty

38. Franklin D. Roosevelt

39. The New Deal

40. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

41. The Bonus March of 1932

42. The America First Movement

43. U.S. Neutrality 1939-1941

44. Lend-Lease

45. America’s Entry into WWII

46. George C. Marshall

47. Any U.S. Military Leader of World War II

48. Individual Battles and Campaigns of World War II

49. The U.S. Army in World War II

50. The U.S. Navy in World War II

51. Allied Grand Strategy in World War II

52. The United States and the Atomic Bomb

53. Women in the Military: World War II

54. The Battle of Midway

55. Douglas MacArthur

56. The Truman Doctrine

57. Post War American Society

58. The Early Days of the Cold War

59. The Civil Rights Movement

60. Martin Luther King

61. The Occupation of Germany

62. The Korean War

63. MacArthur in Japan

64. The Red Scare

65. Senator Joseph McCarthy

66. Eisenhower as President

67. The Sixties

68. John F. Kennedy

69. The Bay of Pigs

70. The Cuban Missile Crisis

71. Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society

72. Any Aspect of the Vietnam War

73. Nixon and Vietnam

74. Nixon and China

75. Watergate

76. The Arab Oil Embargo of 1973

77. Feminism

78. Jimmy Carter as President

79. The Reagan Revolution

80. Arms Control Treaties

81. Reagan and the Soviet Union

82. George Bush and the End of the Cold War

83. Desert Shield/Desert Storm

84. The Impeachment of Bill Clinton

85. The United States in the Post Cold War World

86. The 2000 Presidential Election

87. The Bush Administration

88. The War on Terrorism

89. Immigration in the 1990s

90. Minorities in Contemporary America

91. The Changing American Family

92. The Drug Wars

93. The United States and the Global Economy

94. PAX Americana

95. Contemporary American Foreign Policy

96. The United States Military in the 21st Century

97. U.S. Policy Toward Cuba

98. Operation Iraqi Freedom

99. The War in Afghanistan

100. Kosovo Crisis 1999

101. The Middle East Technology Revolution

Acceptable Academic Research Sources

There have been many questions on what sources are acceptable for academic referencing.

Below is something I copied from the APUS library. How and where you access the source is not

important; its academic validity is. Your best bets are books and journal articles. You

can never cite wikipedia or encyclopedias of any type.

B. Peer-Reviewed/Refereed/Scholarly Journals

Whenever you receive a research assignment in college, instructors normally assume that you

will avoid citing “popular” web sites, magazines and newspapers. While useful for context and

anecdotes, such resources often lack the rigor needed for university studies. Similarly, you are

advised to avoid citing Wikipedia. It can be an excellent launching pad; but, as an encyclopedia,

is considered common knowledge and not to be formally cited.

Instead, your professors expect you to reference and be party to an established professional

literature. This typically includes monographic book-length studies, but especially focuses on

articles from peer-reviewed or refereed scholarly journals.

What does “scholarly,” "refereed," or “peer-reviewed” really mean? Essentially, it implies

academic “quality control"--articles by scholars that meet the publications standards as vetted by

other scholars in the field. The submission has been inspected by a publication panel or

individual reviewers, who are experts on the topic (that is, the author’s professional peers; hence,

“peer-reviewed”). Reviewers or "referees" look for proper use of research methods, significance

of the article’s contribution to the existing literature, and appropriate scholarly style. As

signified by their publication in a peer-reviewed journal, accepted materials have earned the

expert stamp of approval.

Online Library Research: But, with so many articles out there, how do you know if an article has

been peer-reviewed? The Online Library’s article databases can help. The main suites, Ebsco

and ProQuest, give you the option of limiting your searches to articles from scholarly journals

Find and check this option below the search box, and your results will be only expert-approved

articles.

(See: Ebsco example).

Other databases, like PsycARTICLES and Sage Criminology, automatically search only peer-

reviewed journals. A simple click filters out popular sources that you can’t use from the

appropriate literature. Can’t find the article databases…or don’t know which are the best to

search for yourtopic? Of course, if you’ve already found an article that you’d like to use in a

research paper but you’re not sure if it’s popular or scholarly, there are ways to tell. The table

below lists some of the most obvious clues (but your librarians will be happy to help you figure it

out as well--e-mail [email protected]!).

SCHOLARLY

Authors’ names, credentials and even addresses are almost always included (so that interested

researchers can correspond). Authors will be experts in their fields. Articles are written for

experts (or college students!) in the field (lots of technical language and/or discipline specific

jargon, statistical analyses, written in a formal tone).

Articles typically report, in great detail, the authors’ own research findings (and include support

from other research)…these articles will be more than just 1 or 2 pages.

Authors always cite their sources throughout the article, normally in conformance with a Style

Manual, and include list of references at the end.

Articles seldom include photographs, but may include tables or graphs of data (may seem bland

at a glance).

The journal has very specific guidelines for articles to be published (often this information can

be found on the journal’s web site), and a rigorous peer-review process (each article will list

when it was submitted to the reviewers, and when it was accepted for publication…often several

months apart!).

Chicago Style Format — Common Source Citations B= Bibliography Format N= Footnote (bottom of a page) / Endnote (end of the document) Format S = Second Usage

Book (single author) B Brown, Joseph L. The Third Wonder of the World. New York, NY: Vintage Press, 1999.

N 1 Joseph L. Brown, The Third Wonder of the World (New York, NY: Vintage Press, 1999), 210.

S 2 Brown, 153.

Book (two authors)

B Sampson, Larry M. and Timothy B. Landers. A Review of Modern Western Conflicts. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2002. N 1 Larry M. Sampson and Timothy B. Landers, A Review of Modern Western Conflicts (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2002), 362. S 2 Sampson and Landers, 410.

Book (multiple authors)

B Price, Nancy R., Stacey Sanders, Rice Moore, and Julie Finch. Studies of Women in Combat. Boston and New

York: Pave Press, 1987. N 1 Nancy R. Price, et al., Studies of Women in Combat (Boston and New York: Pave Press, 1987), 32. S 2 Price, 188.

Article in a Scholarly Journal B Johnson, Adam S. “The New Deal in Retrospect.” Political History 88, no.1 (Spring 1995): 58-70.

N 1 Adam S. Johnson, “The New Deal in Retrospect,” Political History 88, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 61.

S 2 Johnson, 70.

Article in a Popular Magazine B Briggs, Andrew M. “The Roots of Transcendentalism and Walden Pond.” Transcendentalism Today, May 2003, 34-

42. N 1 Andrew M. Briggs, “The Roots of Transcendentalism and Walden Pond,” Transcendentalism Today, May 2003,

40. S 2 Briggs, 37.

Article in a Newspaper B Robbins, Carol L. “Time Stands Still: Revisiting Appomattox Court House.” Richmond Times, 3 June 2009, A8. N 1 Carol L. Robbins, “Time Stands Still: Revisiting Appomattox Court House,” Richmond Times, 3 June 2009, A8. S 2 Robbins.

Web Site B Baring, Janey. “History and Eastern Asian History.” 5 February 2007. http://www.uoc.edu/Asia/culturalstudies.htm

(accessed 3 March 2009). N 1 Janey Baring, “History and Eastern Asian History” (5 February 2007) http://www.uoc.edu/Asia/culturalstudies.htm

(accessed 3 March 2009). S 2 Baring.

Web Site (no author) B “Higgins Boats.” 3 November 1999. http://www.wwtwostudies.com/boats/higgins.htm (accessed 2 June 1001). N 1 “Higgins Boats,” (3 November 1999) http://www.wwtwostudies.com/boats/higgins.htm (accessed 2 June 1001). S 2 “Higgins Boats.”

Discussion Board Post B Smith, Darryl. “End of the Cold War.” Thu Jun 10 01:49:50 2010. N 1 Darryl Smith, “End of the Cold War,” Thu Jun 10 01:49:50 2010. S 2 Smith.

THERE ARE MANY MORE EXAMPLES/DETAILS ABOUT THE

CHICAGO STYLE IN THE APUS LIBRARY.