Glendale Community College History Questions

Style format: 12 point font, double spaced lines, one inch page margins, no extra spacesbetween paragraphs, indented first sentences of paragraphs. A bibliography is unnecessary ifyou use footnotes or endnotes. You do not need to provide a title page.

File format: a single .doc, .docx, .rtf or .pdf file

Assignment prompt:

Write a 3-6 page paper that makes an argument about the historical significance of one of thechapters from The Cruel Years assigned in the final two weeks of the course (Aug. 22-Aug. 31).

Your paper should have an introduction in which this significance claim serves as the paper’sthesis statement. This thesis statement should explain as specifically as possible how the sourceeither 1) supports, 2) adds to, or 3) challenges one of the arguments in the secondary sourceassigned on the same day as the primary source.

If writing about the primary source for Aug. 22 (“Georgia Sharecroppers: Slavery’s NewClothes”), the significance claim would explain how that text supports, adds to, to challengesarguments in the secondary source (Nakano Glenn, “Blacks and Whites in the South”, Chap. 4 inUnequal Freedom).

A good test of whether your thesis is sufficiently specific is if it answers a how or why question.If, for instance, your thesis states that a primary source adds a “personal” or “emotional”perspective to our understanding of a particular topic in U.S. history, but doesn’t explain how orwhy, then it is incomplete because it is not sufficiently specific. It still needs to say how—whatspecific stories, told in what specific way—this “personal” story helps us understand history.

To prove your thesis in your paper requires summarizing and analyzing a primary source. It alsorequires summarizing at least one argument contained in a secondary source that is useful forhelping place the primary source in a broader historical context. Failure to do both of thesethings will make the paper incomplete.

Your paper’s body paragraphs should therefore have three parts: 1) summarize the primarysource in its entirety, 2) summarize an argument in the secondary source, and then 3)demonstrate how or why the primary source supports, adds to, or challenges the secondarysource argument that you’ve described. You may present each section in any order that youprefer.

Each section may be one long paragraph, though it may be helpful to use multiple paragraphsorganized around particular topics. Each body paragraph must begin with a topic sentence thatsummarizes the subject of the paragraph. Each body paragraph must also present evidence— inthe form of a quote or information drawn from assigned reading— to support its claims.

Your summary and analysis of the primary source should include the following: the name of theperson (if it is provided), roughly what time period the story covers (if it can be discerned), whatplaces the story describes, what topics the story covers, and what argument(s) you believe theauthor is making. As part of your description, you may want to consider one of these topics: therole of work in the person’s life; their experience of economic, racial, citizenship, and/ orgender inequality; their views on what kind of country the U.S. is and their place within it; andhow they’ve responding to adversity. These are potential subjects—you are not required tocover any of them.

Your summary of the secondary source should include the author’s name, the book’s title, tanda summary of a key argument in the chapter that is useful for analyzing the primary source.

Your demonstration that the primary source supports, adds to, or challenges an argument inthe secondary source should contrast the two texts.

Your paper should have a short conclusion. The conclusion presumes that you have alreadyproven your argument, so you don’t have to restate it. Instead, it identifies the potentialsignificance (or implications) of your argument. Implications can include (but do not have to belimited to): the value of studying primary sources to understand history, the value of studyingthe particular topic you wrote about, questions about 19th century U.S. history deservinggreater study, or the potential relevance of 19th century U.S. history to understandingsomething about the present.

Identifying and Citing Sources

When quoting a text, you must identify in your writing who or what you are quoting—forexample, the text itself, the name and title of a person quoted in the text, the name of anhistorical figure referenced in the text, the title and date of a document that runs alongside themain text, etc. If the meaning of the quote is not obvious, you should analyze and/ or explainthe quote’s meaning and demonstrate how it supports your argument.

All sources for this assignment (including assigned readings) must be cited using footnotes orendnotes formatted according to the Chicago Manual of Style:https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citatio…

Failure to place verbatim text from other sources in quotes, failure to cite outside sources, orhaving someone complete your assignment for you are forms of plagiarism and violations of thestudent code. Students who are found to have plagiarized any of the answers will receive a zerofor the assignment, and no opportunity to redo the assignment.