History Question

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The Historiographical Essay is worth 150 points (15% of total course grade).

Due: Week 7

Objective: Create an overview of what other historians have written about your research topic.

This week you should begin working on your Historiographical Essay, which you will submit as a Word attachment by the end of Week 7.

Historiographical Essay: For this assignment, write a historiographical essay based on a survey of eight or more of the secondary sources you found in the Library Project (Searching Exercise). There are examples linked below.

Think of historiography as akin to geography. As geography is a survey of the landscape, so historiography is a survey of what historians have said on your topic.

This paper is a survey of the secondary source materials related to the topic of your own major research paper. Every field observes the practice of a survey of secondary sources. In some fields, this is called the literature review. In our field, this practice is called Historiography. See the Historiography reading in the Week 6 Readings.

The goal of a historiographical essay is to show what others have argued about your topic. You must develop a new approach for your own research paper, so a survey of what others have written about your topic is crucial to establishing what is new about your research. This assignment should be about 1,500 to 2,000 words long (six to eight pages).

This paper will offer your readers an overview of what other historians have written about your topic.

• What were their theses (not your thesis)?
• What were their main arguments?
• What sources did they examine and how did that influence their arguments?

Your Historiographical Essay should be about 6 to 8 pages long. You may expand your Historiographical Essay to as long as eight pages, but no longer than eight full double spaced pages. I want you to be able to plug your Historiographical Essay into your final paper in History 495 as your historiography section.

Cite all of the secondary sources that you summarize with endnotes (not footnotes) using Chicago Style Notes-Bibliography Form.

A Note on Citation: After you have cited a source in full, complete form once in endnotes, all subsequent citations may use the Short Form. See the CMOS Quick Guide and scroll down to Shortened Notes.

You may have heard of or seen Ibid for referencing the same source in two endnotes in a row. The 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style discourages the use of Ibid., and instead encourages Short Form notes for greater clarity, particularly when notes extend over several pages.

By doing a Historiographical Essay, you learn what other historians' have argued about your topic, which will help you avoid simply repeating what has already been said. You will then better understand how your thesis adds to our examination of your topic. Are you taking a new approach, using new sources, and/or a new focus? After doing your Historiographical Essay, you should have gained a basic understanding of how your paper is adding something unique because you have seen what other historians have argued about your topic (and related topics).

Here is what should not be in your Historiographical Essay.:

• Do not put forward your argument about the subject at all. Historiography is about what other scholars have written about your topic. This paper is to show the reader what other scholars have argued about your topic. It is not your argument.
• Do not include your assessment of other scholars' arguments. You should only tell what they have argued, not critique their arguments or challenge their assumptions. You will be doing that later in your HIST 495 paper.
• Do not include primary sources. This is not a mini-version of your capstone paper.

Nowhere in your Historiographical Essay should you indicate what your arguments are. Do not put your own thesis of your paper. You will write your own paper with your argument and primary sources research in History 495.

Instead the goal of this assignment is to learn what other historians have written about your topic. This will give you a solid idea of what has already been written about your topic. This allows you to see where your ideas will fit in to what has already been written about your topic. If you have any questions about what should or shouldn't be in your Historiographical Essay ask me.

In organizing your Historiographical Essay, introduce your topic and the general arguments that you found about your topic by other historians in the first paragraph (the thesis paragraph). Again, do not describe your views about the topic. Then try to organize your paper around the different interpretations you have found.

1. The first paragraph should be a thesis paragraph in which you give an overview of what other historians have argued about your topic.
2. Then summarize each secondary source. You can do that by devoting one paragraph to a summary of each secondary source. In your summary of each secondary source include the author's name, the title of their work, their thesis, their main supporting points, and the sources they used.
3. Finish with a conclusion paragraph that sums up the major arguments you have just summarized in your supporting points. (There is no need for a bibliography for this assignment.)

When you write your final paper in History 495, you will take your Historiographical Essay and use it as your historiography section. You can correct any errors that I noted when I grade your Historiographical Essay and simply insert it into your final History 495 paper. The reader can then see what others have argued about your topic from your historiography section. They can then see what existing interpretations you are arguing against or how your ideas are new compared to what has already been written about your topic.

Having a historiography section allows the reader to compare your approach/argument with others who have looked at the same or similar topics so that they can understand what is new about your project.

Please use the grading rubric below these instructions to guide you.

Submit your Historiographical Essay as a Word file (.doc or .docx) via this assignment.