Paper #1 Assignment – Primary Source Analysis

Paper #1 Assignment—Historical Argument About a Primary News Source

The Assignment

The assignment is to present a historical argument about a primary news source. For this paper, we will all write on The New York Herald in 1872, taking as our primary source corpus the Sunday, July 15, 1872 edition of the paper. We’ll do much of the preparation for this paper collectively.

Your goal (our goal!) is to develop an interesting, not obvious, historical argument, and to develop it out of the sources at hand: the primary source (H.M. Stanley’s reporting, other reports from the New York Herald on this day), some elementary research on the context.

I’ll give you the option of going out on your own to write this paper — developing your own thesis about this source and writing the paper as you would like. But I encourage you to join the class in a common writing exercise. Toward that end, we will develop the paper in stages, compiling notes, brainstorming our argument, constructing an outline, then (and here you will work on our own) drafting and reworking the text of the paper.

Some Guidelines

  • Length: 3 to 5 pages
  • Format: Follow the guidelines in the Sample Short Paper with one exception. Include a bibliography of sources for the paper.
  • Use Chicago-style footnotes to show the source of information and examples and quotations
  • Note that you can use any of the words and phrases and sentences from our class paper preparation notes as your own (without worrying about attribution). Quotations and paraphrases from our primary sources and secondary sources should be quoted and/or cited.
  • Upload paper in pdf format to Moodle assignment

Criteria

  • Does your paper show a strong understanding of the primary source?
  • Does it show a strong understanding of context?
  • Does it present a strong thesis?
  • Does it deliver this thesis with well-chosen examples and strong analysis?
  • Is it well organized (with a strong structure and well-organized paragraphs)?
  • Is it well written – in clear prose that sounds like you?
  • Is it interesting? Does it tell a compelling story?