HIST 101: WRITING ASSIGNMENT GUIDE

Writing assignments in this class focus on one or more primary source excerpts assigned by the instructor (see Sakai: Resources: Writing Assignments). The main goal of the essay is for you to demonstrate that you have carefully read the selected primary source(s) and have taken time to apply the methods of historical analysis that we have discussed in class. Begin with the following steps:

- First, make sure that you have a solid grasp on the source(s): Who wrote the text(s)? When? For what purposes, either explicit or implicit? This information is provided in the introduction to each source.

- Second, make sure that you understand the wider context of your source, that is, where it fits into a broader historical framework involving trends, events, historical actors, and other developments. Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, for instance, was written by an elite Roman citizen during the reign of Augustus, at a time when Roman confidence in their historical identity and their future as a state was riding high. Understanding how your source interacts with its historical moment is essential.

- Finally, respond directly to the Main Question (in bold) posed by the prompt, taking into consideration the basic information about the source and its wider context. Try to "connect the dots" between the source(s) and lecture and discussion materials. Develop a primary argument or a main point (sometimes called a “thesis” or “thesis statement”) in response to the Main Question. Think of this exercise as “staking a claim” for what you judge to be an important issue or theme found in the readings: your “argument,” so to speak, is that you have identified something important and relevant, based on the primary source evidence (not just your opinion, feelings, or speculation). Be sure to substantiate your claims with references and/or direct quotations from the assigned primary sources. Your thesis should ideally be broad enough to act as an umbrella over multiple more specific assertions, which will form the basis for your paragraphs (see below). After the Main Question, there will usually be supplementary questions, not in bold, to guide and refine your thinking; you do NOT need to answer every one of these questions necessarily, and a paper which simply runs down this list in turn will not usually be satisfactory from a structural or organizational standpoint! I want to make this point even more clearly: do not directly answer all of the Supplementary Questions in turn! They are simply ways of guiding your thinking!

Structure

One of the most important aspects of your paper is that it have ‘good bones’: that is to say, that its basic structure is sound and makes your argument easy to read. The pieces of a well-structured essay are as follows:

Your introductory paragraph is the most important part of the entire essay. A good historical introduction will do three things: 1) Set your scene: take a sentence or two to situate us in time and space, to let your reader know what the context and backdrop is for your argument. 2) Introduce the primary source you are analyzing. Let me know what you’re reading, and if we know who wrote it and when, mention this too. Give some sense of its value. Be brief here, though; a full summary of your text is not required (see below for more on this). 3) your thesis statement, the most important single sentence of your essay. This should be no more than two sentences, ever, and generally should just be one: this is more or less your direct response to the Main Question. It is a clear, concise statement of what you will argue, and may (particularly in a short essay) contain direct reference to the main ideas of your body paragraphs. At the bottom of this Writing Assignment Guide you will find a sample introductory paragraph, written about the Laudatio Turiae, to give you some sense of what this might look like. Obviously, do not plagiarize from my sample paragraph!

After the introduction, what’s most important is that your body paragraphs accurately reflect the argument you ‘promised’ in that first paragraph, and that each of them address just one idea stated in the first sentence, or ‘topic sentence’. It’s very common for people simply to break paragraphs because they think they have reached the right length; in fact, every paragraph break you make should be purposeful, reflecting the fact that you have fully articulated and defended one point and are ready to move onto the next.
Citations:

It is appropriate and desirable to use CAREFULLY chosen quotations from the primary sources to illustrate your points. If you quote a source, be sure to use “quotation marks” and provide a citation (either in the text, or in a footnote) which indicates the page number: if I have provided an author and title for your primary source, you should include some version of them here. Shorthand versions of the titles are fine: for instance, (Plutarch, Cleopatra, 3). Without proper citations you are open to charges of plagiarism. Please note that separate bibliographies are not required or encouraged. Also, please avoid long citations that take up too much space—be very selective in what you quote.

Other Tips:

-  Try where possible to make “synthetic” assertions – that is, assertions which take two or more different things and identify a common thread between them, or otherwise establish their joint significance. This is the most basic form of good historical analysis, and will take your essays beyond a simple catalogue, i.e., “the source says this.” Find two or more things the source “says” and tell me what these things show when taken together.

Conversely: do not simply summarize your source. If I think you are spending more time summarizing your source than analyzing it, and if I think that the raw narrative of the source is driving your essay instead of your observations about it, your grade will suffer. After the basic elements of structure and evidence, this is one of the biggest things that I look for.

- Each paragraph should make one concrete assertion which contributes directly to your argument, and that paragraph should also include your supporting evidence for that assertion. Do not break paragraphs just because you feel like you should; instead, pay attention to what you’re asserting in each paragraph and determine whether you have moved to a new idea that should get a dedicated paragraph. A single paragraph which appears excessively long (say, more than an entire page) is not an invitation to introduce an arbitrary paragraph break; rather, it’s a good sign either that you need to make your point more concisely, or that you’ve accidentally combined multiple separate assertions which really deserve their own paragraphs.

-  No significant assertion should be without direct evidence, preferably from the assigned primary source(s). The most common form of evidence is a direct quotation, but your primary source can also be paraphrased; note that this still requires a citation or it is technically plagiarism.

- Do not conduct outside research for your papers. You are, of course, encouraged to read as widely as you like, but these papers should be written only with your assigned texts for this class, particularly the primary sources on which the papers are intended to focus. If you wish to include evidence from our lectures this is of course acceptable, but do not use this as a crutch to avoid digging into your primary source. Primary source analysis should form the core and majority of your paper. If you are absolutely desperate for additional reading to illuminate a given topic or source, come see me and I will provide recommendations.
Primary Source Comparison Paper

Please compose a formal essay of four to five pages (that is, you should at least COMPLETE four pages of writing), double spaced and in 12-point font, and submit it under the “Assignments” tab on Sakai. Please submit your paper in the form of a .doc or .docx—not a PDF or Pages file—and title it according to the following format: [Student Full Name] Comparison Paper. 

Your paper should make an argument in direct response to the following question, and then supports that argument with evidence from BOTH of your primary sources:

Main Question: What can the Historia Calamitatum and Erec and Enide tell us about gender roles, gender expectations, and gender relations in twelfth-century Europe?

What is the role of gender in each source? What roles do men seem to play in the cultural or social milieu each source reflects, and what roles do women seem to play? Are women depicted positively in each text excerpt, or negatively? What about men? If there are multiple depictions of men (or women) in a given source, what kinds of male or female behavior seem to be depicted positively? What does this tell you about gender expectations? Do the people/characters in each text seem to feel pressure to perform certain gender roles or meet certain gender expectations? How do they respond to this pressure, or how does each text seem to think they should respond?

Do the two sources seem to reflect the same cultural or social milieu? How are the two different? Are there similarities in the presentation of gender across both source texts? Are there differences? What do those similarities and differences tell you about medieval European culture and society? Do gender roles seem to have been hard and fast, or malleable according to circumstance? What kinds of statements can you make about gender in the Middle Ages on the basis of both texts?

Note: The most satisfactory responses to this prompt will make a genuine effort to make the two source texts interact with each other, and to draw some synthetic conclusions which apply to BOTH texts. Do not simply produce a paper which has one body paragraph containing all your observations about the Historia Calamitatum and one body paragraph containing all your observations about Erec and Enide.