First will be to get you to place these documents in their general and specific historical contexts. The second will foster some grasp on historical change through the documents by getting you to compare and contrast them in their contexts. Early in the semester we will spend some time discussing how one reads primary sources and what one might expect to learn from them. The journal that you keep this semester will be an important part of our class. Your journal will be exploratory writing.
Exploratory writing is part of the process of thinking and a document of it.
The process of writing will stimulate your imagination and help you to generate ideas about our course. The entries that you make in your journal will be of special interest to yourself, because you will write them in your own way. Your journal is the place where you can give full range to your ideas and freedom to your writing style. Entries in your journal should allow you to enjoy writing, actively involve you in issues raised by the course, and prepare you for other more formal writing assignments. Journal entries should be typed, carefully labeled, and dated.