The heart of your work in this class will be a 15-25 page historiographical paper. You will choose, in consultation with me, a theme on an aspect of the urban experience. I will give you a list of five books relating to that theme . Your job will be to critically evaluate those books, compare their respective arguments, and discuss how future work on the theme might go based on the strengths and weaknesses of the books. The questions raised in the book review assignment will be useful for your evaluations of the books for this paper.
Writing is a difficult process, one that is best done in stages.
Note that you will write the paper in several stages over the semester. You will turn in an outline covering the basic points the readings cover in your themes on October 5. You should have at least looked at the introductions to your five books by the time you do the outline. Your rough draft is due October 26. You should have read all five of your books and be ready to compare their respective merits and weaknesses by the time you start your rough draft.