One of the best tools for a historian is materials produced by individuals who lived through the period that is being studied. You will be responsible for writing two (2) papers during the course of the semester in which you use primary documents to learn about the society that produced them. For the purpose of these papers, you may only use the primary sources assigned for the course and information gained from the course lectures in your writing. Any sort of analysis that is drawn from outside sources—or anyone besides yourself, for that matter—will result in an F.
You will choose one set of primary source documents from the list below with their according course theme. When reading the documents, keep in mind you are writing about how the society/culture that produced the document views your chosen topic, not simply what the document is about. In other words, the point of the assignment is to analyze the sources, not just summarize them. When writing make sure you are thinking about these questions: What society produced this document? How does this document help you better understand the society that produced it?
The purpose of this assignment is twofold: first, you must succinctly summarize and synthesize your sources. The most import aspect of this portion is to not only recite what the sources say but to relate how they speak to one another. Consider these sorts of questions when writing your synthesis portion: where do they agree or disagree? How do they defend their arguments or what sorts of evidence to they employ compared to one another? Who is the author of this piece, and how might this affect their viewpoints?
Secondly, you need to explicitly relate these sources to the corresponding course theme assigned. For this section, consider the sources as a whole. How do these sources, as a whole, embody, relate to, and/or reflect the selected course theme? How does the course theme help us better understand these documents? What do these sources reveal about this larger theme in human history? Put simply, you need to analyze the sources through the lenses of their corresponding course theme.
Citations
For the purpose of this course, I only require that you have in-text, parenthetical citations. Please include the last name of the author (or if the author is unknown, the first 3 words of the title) and the page number (if no page number is available, cite the line number or image number).
For example, citing a section of H. D. Lloyd, selections from “The Story of a Great Monopoly” on page three should look like this: “quoted text” (Lloyd 3).
You must cite your sources whether or not you are directly quoting or paraphrasing the work. If it is not original analysis of the source but rather a reference to the source, you must cite that line or lines.
Papers will only be accepted up to one week after their due date. After that time a score of 0 will be assigned. Up until that point, there will be a one-third letter grade deduction per day.
Primary source choices
Othering: Ethnicity and Race in American Identity
- Thomas Jefferson, selections from “Notes on the Slavery”
- Alexander Stephens, selections from “The Cornerstone Address”
Moral Philosophy of Economics: Capitalism and Revolutionary Labor
- Andrew Ure, selections from The Philosophy of Manufactures
- H. D. Lloyd, selections from “The Story of a Great Monopoly”
Political Philosophy: Power to the People, But Who Are the People, Anyway?
- Lewis Henry Morgan, selections from “The Destiny of the Indian, 1851”
- Chief Justice Marshall, Cherokee Nation v. the State of Georgia, 183
Gender and Sexuality: Women and Sexual Minorities in American Society
- Eliza Daniel Stewart, selections from Memories of the Crusade
- Selections from Bradwell v. Illinois, 1873
Religion and the State: Christianity, Secularism, and Minority Religions in American Society
- Thomas Jefferson, “Virginia Statute for Religions Freedom”
- Jonathan Edwards, selections from “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
