HIST 2010-

Paper Assignment (15% of Final Grade)- Fall 2019

 

Question:

Were ideological or material interests more important in shaping the United States in the years between English colonization and the beginning of the Civil War? Answer this question in 2-3 pages using evidence that supports your position.

 

Explanation:

In HIST 2010, we’ve covered a number of factors that have shaped the development of the United States from a collection of British Colonies into an independent and united political entity. These decisions made at key moments in this period can be grouped into two general categories: those driven by ideological interests (religious, political, and other types of beliefs) and those driven by material interests (wealth, land acquisition, etc). While both types of interests were important in these years, your assignment is to look at the evidence from the class and decide which of the two was more important. Your answer to this question will serve as your thesis. Again, make sure to use plenty of evidence from the course readings.

 

Assignment Overview:

The purpose of this assignment is to show that you know and understand the material we’ve covered in this course, and can use it to answer a question. This means you should include evidence from lecture and readings and use only the materials assigned for HIST 2010 (ie no outside sources). Start by looking at the evidence, formulate a thesis, and then back up that thesis with plenty of good evidence that supports your thesis. In other words, you should do well to demonstrate that you know the material in this course. Anyone can give an opinion based on how they feel, but you are scholars, so I expect you to take an informed position that is based on what you can prove with evidence. If you choose to turn in a paper with few sources to back up your thesis, then you choose to receive a poor grade on this paper.

 

Submission Options

Option 1: First Draft and Final Draft

Students who wish to submit a first draft and get feedback on it before turning in a final draft must submit their first draft to the “First Draft” drop box folder  and will then must submit their revised paper in the “Final Draft” dropbox folder Note: First drafts must be complete papers no shorter than two full pages in length.

Option 2: Standard Deadline

Students who do not wish to submit a first draft must submit their paper to the “Standard Deadline” dropbox folder  This is a one-time submission, so make sure you’re sending in a polished version of the paper.

 

 

 

Submission Requirements for All Papers (First/Final Drafts & Standard Deadline)

In order to receive full credit for this assignment, you must submit both of the following:

-A typed copy of your paper

-An audio copy of you reading your paper

*- Your assignment is not fully submitted until you have turned in both of these versions. First drafts submitted without both will not be counted and will revert to the standard deadline. Written papers submitted in either the Final Draft or Standard Deadline folders without an audio copy will receive a 5% deduction for every day it is late with a maximum penalty of 50%.

Required Format & Guidelines

(You can use this as a check list before you turn in your paper)

 

-Your paper must have a title page that includes your name, course, and section number, and the semester. This page does not count toward the limit. Your paper should begin on the first line of the page that follows your title page.

 

-The paper must be in 12-point Times New Roman font with 1” margins at left and right and 1” margins at top and bottom. It must be double-spaced. Failing to meet these requirements will lead to a deduction in your grade.

 

-You may only use sources assigned for this course. Papers that cite only one source will receive a maximum grade of a D. Papers that cite no sources will receive a 0. Class lectures count as one source no matter how many different lectures you cite.

 

-If you plagiarize on this paper, you will receive an F for the course and be reported to the university. MTSU has plagiarism detection software that compares your paper to not only outside sources, but other papers that students have submitted to MTSU and other colleges. Don’t throw your grade away by being too lazy to do your own work. If you aren’t sure what counts as plagiarism, ask Dr. Sawyer and/or read MTSU’s policy on Academic Integrity.

 

-You must cite your sources using end notes. These come at the end of your paper (ie, not foot notes and not in-text citations). A guide to the format is at the end of this document. Your word processor can insert these end notes for you (doing this is different with each program, but you can find a youtube video that explains how to do it for your word processor/operating system). The end notes do not count toward your page total.

 

– This is a formal paper and spelling or grammatical mistakes will reduce your grade. You will catch many errors when you read your paper for the audio recording, so don’t plan to finish your paper at the last minute. Give yourself time to fix the errors you find.

 

-Failing to meet the page requirements will result in a reduced grade. One full page and a line on the next page is not two pages- it is one page and one line. The page requirement concerns both minimum and maximum page numbers, so please do not exceed three pages.

 

-No lengthy direct quotations. Only directly quote sources when doing so is absolutely necessary to get your point across, and don’t quote more than a few essential words. Do not directly quote lectures (you probably didn’t write down word-for-word what I said).

 

Things to consider when writing:

-The best way to show the impact of material/ideological factors is to pick pivotal moments/events/themes in American history and then show how material/ideological factors were essential in causing/shaping/determining their origins/outcome. Don’t just focus on one narrow event (For example, don’t focus your entire paper on the American Revolution). You want to show your argument works across the time period we’ve covered in class.

 

-It’s not enough to simply show that material or ideological factors existed. You should demonstrate how the pursuit of these goals motivated and shaped the course of history.

Good example of how to open a paragraph: “The Mexican-American War clearly shows the primacy of (ideological goals/material interests) in shaping the US.”

Bad example of how to open a paragraph: “Land was an important material factor in American history.”

Terrible example of how to open a paragraph: “People always want land, so just like everyone, Americans at this time wanted to take the land that was around them.”

 

– A good paper will draw on both primary and secondary sources. Primary sources include speeches, journal entries, newspaper articles, and anything else that comes from the historical period in question. Secondary sources are those produced afterward by people who are interpreting these primary sources. For example, George Washington’s Farewell Speech is a primary source. Freeman’s “Understanding the Burr-Hamilton Duel” is a secondary source.

 

-Who produced a source matters. Always take this into account when using sources for your paper. An extreme example: if Chris Rock says a bullet should cost five thousand dollars, people laugh, but if the President said a bullet should cost five thousand dollars, people would get mad. Make sure you’re clear about who it is that you’re citing on a particular issue.

 

-Stick to the time period indicated in the question. Don’t wax on about how these years affected America “today.” The question is about the period leading up to the Civil War.

 

-Don’t ramble on about a vague issue. You should be leading your reader through evidence, not repeating how “crazy” something is, proclaiming that “people always want [blank], or chalk it all up to “human nature.”

 

-Write formally and don’t use the first person in your paper (ie don’t use “I” in your writing). “I believe Andrew Jackson wanted to remove Native Americans from southern states” is a bad sentence because Jackson did want to do that whether you believe it or not. “I believe” or “I feel the US was more driven by material factors” is a bad sentence because, as stated earlier, this paper is about what you can prove, not what you believe. (And to be clear, I’m not saying that your beliefs aren’t important- they are! But when it comes to making a fact-based argument, you need to be led by strong evidence). If you want to indicate that you’re aware you haven’t looked at every source, a better way to indicate that is to write “According to [blank source]…”

Citation Guide

 

You don’t need a works cited page, so you’ll only need to cite your sources in your end notes (remember- not foot notes; not in-text citations). Inserting end notes into your paper is different on various programs and operating systems, but if you’re unsure how to do this, go to the library and ask the folks at the tech desk- they’ll know. And if you want an example of how end notes look, here you go (notice the “i” at the end of this sentence- it indicates that there is an end note. Go to the very end of this document and you’ll see the end note).[i]

 

Now here’s what the citations in your endnotes should look like!

 

For published sources and websites, use the following format:

 

Book with one author:

Author name (first, last), Title of Book (Publisher, Date), page number.

 

Example: Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (W.W. Norton & Company, 2005) 114.

 

Article/chapter in an edited collection:

Author name (first, last), “Title,” in Collection Title, ed. Editor Name (Publisher, Year) page number.

 

Example: John Kenneth Galbraith, “The Crash,” in The Essential Galbraith

276. Andrea D. Williams (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001) 276.

 

Newspaper Article

Author, “Article Title,” Source, date, page number. (or date accessed, website. in place of page number if found online).

 

Example: Erika Schickel, “Pilgrims’ Sermons Echo in Sarah Vowell’s Ears,” LA Times, November 2, 2008, accessed November 14, 2014, http://articles.latimes.com/2008/nov/02/entertainment/ca-sarah-vowell2.

 

Website

Author (if available), “Page Title,” Website Title, date accessed, website.

 

Example: “Hot Off the Presses,” American Experience, PBS, accessed November 14, 2014, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dday/sfeature/sf_press.html

 

Lecture:

Dr. Sawyer, Lecture Title, History 2010, Spring 2019

 

 

Course Primary Sources:

Author (if available), Document Title, Date (date accessed, website if source is online)

 

Example: Martin Luther King Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” August 1963.

 

Video:

“Video Title,” date created, time stamp rounded to nearest minute, (date last accessed, website if online).

 

Example: “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara,” 2003, 55:00.

 

Podcast Audio:

“Episode Title,” Podcast Title, Date episode aired, timestamp of beginning of relevant discussion rounded to nearest minute.

 

Example: “#132 In The Footsteps of Lafayette,” The Road to Now, June 10, 2019, 34:00.

 

 

 

[i]Here’s the end note- right at the end of the entire paper where your endnotes should be.

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