History 209: Research and Writing in History

Cross-listed as English 209
Spring 2008
Monday, 3:00 - 5:50
Marilyn Julius, Instructor
Villa Julie College
Stevenson, MD 21153

Objectives | Requirements| Books & Materials | Evaluation | Please

Welcome to History 209: Research and Writing in History! This semester, you will learn to use the tools and methods of historians, to interpret and evaluate historical sources, to construct narratives and analyses based on your research, and to present your material for a variety of audiences. The course will focus on a research project related to some aspect of your family history within a social history context. For more see the Research Project link.

Requirements 
The assignments in History 209 are designed to introduce you to the historian's methods and their application to academic and public history. Following are descriptions of the assignments.

Weekly Perfect Postings
These one-page (250-300 words) papers will be due most weeks on Friday on Blackboard. As part of your social history background reading, most weeks you will read and respond to a chapter of Steven Mintz and Susan Kellog's Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life. The purpose of these postings is for you to improve your writing skills.

Unit I: Research Project: Weeks 1-10

Research
During this period you will research your topic and write up the results in a weekly paper. You'll also learn how to find primary and secondary sources, analyze primary documents, and document your sources.

The story of your research
At the end of this project, you will submit your finished research narrative -- the story of your research process based on your weekly research reports: what you did first, what you learned, how one source led you to the next, dead ends and successes.

Audience and purpose: This report is intended not for a public audience but for yourself, your teacher, and other class members. Your purpose is to capture your research methods and findings. In a sense, you are writing a mystery story about your search.

Unit II: Web Project: Weeks 11-16

During the last few weeks of the semester, you will re- envision your research material for a public audience. We will work in class to develop a compresensive history writing website with each of you contributing an article based on your semester research.

This time your audience will be the general public and your purpose to inform (and to entertain).You can imagine how much this version will differ from the previous report. You must consider your web audience in deciding on organization, content, and design.

Course Objectives
Here's what you will do in this course:

• Practice the critical reading and thinking skills used by professional historians, including
  
  • Recognizing conflicting evidence
  • Acknowledging the subjective nature of all research (including your own),
  • Developing tests of reliability
  • Constructing truthful narratives - ones that do justice to actual events (acknowledging, of course, that all historical accounts are biased, written from a particular political, social, economic, or aesthetic point of view) 
    
    
• Follow an organized research writing process , including
  
  • Conducting meaningful research: finding, reading, interpreting, and evaluating primary and secondary sources.
  • To research for the joy of learning.
  • Creating a worthy argument or thesis.
  • Choosing effective ways to organize and develop material
  • Incorporating and documenting sources
    
    
• Develop skills for addressing a variety of audiences, including
  
  • Writing for both academic and public audiences
  • Writing for print and for new media (web)
  • Matching writing style and tone to audience and purpose. 
  • Writing objectively, clearly, and correctly.
  
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Readings

Required:

David E. Kyvig and Myron A Marty. Nearby History, 2nd ed. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. 2000. (available in bookstore)

Steven Mintz and Susan Kellog. Domestic Revolutions. New York: Free Press 1988. (available in bookstore)

Recommended (especially for public history majors):

Richard Marius. A Short Guide to Writing about History (available in bookstore)

Handout:
Katherine Scott Sturdevant, Bringing Your Family History to Life through Social History (exceprts).

Please . . .

Be prepared.
About reading: Some days we will discuss the reading and go over your reading notes. Or, you might have a brief quiz. CHECK THE WEBSITE NEWS FREQUENTLY.

About writing: Since much class time will be used for discussion, peer editing, evaluating sources, editing exercises, and peer editing, your attendance is essential! Because drafting is essential to good writing, missing a draft date (that is, not having the draft ready on time) will lower your grade for that assignment by one-half letter.

About snow: If school is open, I will be in class. Use your own judgment about driving to campus. If the college is closed, please check the News page for updates .

Be prompt. Turn in all work on time. Grades on late assignments will disappoint you (papers are devalued one letter grade per class period except in the case of documented absences for illness requiring a doctor's visit, a court appearance, a death in the family).

But wait! You do have one safety valve. One assignment may be turned in one week late. Inclass work may be made up only with a documented excuse: from a physician, hospital, court, or other verifiable documentation.

Be honest with yourself and with me about your attendance, class preparation, and assignments.

Plagiarism is academic dishonesty. Failure to cite sources for paraphrased or quoted material, submitting someone else's work or misrepresentation of your work will earn a 0 and will result in failure of the course. Minor misuse of sources or incorrect documentation will result in lowered grade for the assignment.

Be open-minded. Expect a lot. Get involved. Be curious. Have fun, too!

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Evaluation
You are responsible for meeting the English Department
Grading Standards for content, organization, and correctness. The following interpretation of the Grading Standards will apply to your papers.

Content and Organization: What you have to say and how you structure your ideas are, of course, most important. You should be concerned with purpose and audience, arrangement of points, development of content, unity, and coherence.

Style: Writing style--how you say what you say--often separates the excellent from the merely acceptable paper. We will work on writing clear, concise prose for a variety of audiences.

Correctness: You must be able to write correctly to pass this course. Papers with `A' content/structure should be virtually error-free to receive an `A' grade. Serious errors in sentence construction, grammar, or mechanics seriously devalue a paper.

Julius Grading Policy
On individual assignments you may receive a numerical or a letter grade. Numerical grades are recorded on a grade book spreadsheet according to the following scale:

Final Grade: After all grades are in, your final grade is determined by the new Villa Julie grading scale shown below with no second guessing on the teacher’s part!  What is, is.