History 476

Devine

Spring 2007

 

PAPER ASSIGNMENT #2

 

This essay is due Wednesday May 9th by 11:59 pm.  If you did not submit an “Option A” essay, you must do this assignment.  You may email your essay to me as an attachment (the preferred method), turn it in to the History Department office (Sierra Tower 610), or hand it to me in person. When you email your essay, send a “CC” copy to yourself so you will have proof of the time you sent the email if, for some reason, I do not receive it.

 

DIRECTIONS

 

·         Essays must be at least 1500 words and no more than 2000 words. If you use MS Word and you want to see how many words your essay is, pull down the “File” menu and choose “Properties,” then click on the “Statistics” tab.

 

·         Essays should be typed and double-spaced with one inch margins all around. To set the margins with MS Word, pull down the “File” menu and choose “Page Setup…”

 

·         Essays should have page numbers. To insert page numbers with MS Word, pull down the “Insert” menu, choose “Page Numbers,” and click “OK.”

 

·         Essays must have an appropriate title (something more imaginative – or at least descriptive – than “Essay 2”). The title should indicate to the reader what your paper is about (much as a book title indicates to a reader what the book is about.)

 

·         Make sure you are citing properly. If you are quoting directly from a source (in other words, using the author’s exact words), cite the author and page number in parentheses within the body of the text, i.e. (Moody, 47). All direct quotes MUST be in quotation marks and must be cited. Paraphrases or summaries of ideas drawn from the readings MUST also be cited, even if you are not quoting directly, i.e. (Moody, 28-32]

 

·         Don’t forget to put your name at the top of page 1 of the essay before you email it. (People actually forget to do this.)

 

·         If you have any questions or are in any way unsure about what you are being asked to do, be sure to speak with me via email or in person.

 

THE ASSIGNMENT

 

CHOOSE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:

 

  1. Conduct an oral history interview with a person of your choice.  The subject matter for the interview should concern that person’s childhood or adolescence (under 21 years).  You will then write an essay about this individual and place his or her experiences in the larger historical setting.  In doing this, you will show to what extent your subject’s childhood/adolescence was either typical or atypical.  In other words, you must show how aspects of his/her life provide specific examples of, or exceptions from, what we have studied about American youth culture during the period in which he/she was growing up.  A good rule of thumb is to divide your paper about 50/50 between a recounting of your interview and material from the course.  This does not mean that you should do a summary of the interview for the first three pages and discuss the historical context for the final three pages.  The best papers will weave the individual’s experiences into the narrative of the essay.  When you quote directly from or paraphrase one of the readings from the course, be sure to cite the source as follows: (Author’s name, page #).

 

  1. Write a piece of historical fiction recounting the childhood/adolescence of a character of your own creation.  This can take the form of a series of diary or journal entries, a letter or series of letters, an interview, a short story, or, if you think you can pull it off, a screenplay.  Your composition can cover the character’s entire young life (growing up in the city at the turn of the century), a year or two (college experiences during the 1920s, participation in sit-ins and other forms of activism during the civil rights movement), or even a particular event (perhaps your character rode the rails from New York to LA one summer, or co-founded Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), or spent the day at Coney Island.)  The key to a successful essay is to draw as extensively as possible on the course reading to recreate the historical context as fully and as accurately as possible.  You want your reader to have a keen sense of what it was like to be young during the period your character lived.  Relate not only what your character does, but consider what he/she thinks, feels, worries about, fears, enjoys, hates, and so on.  Also try to give as authentic a description as possible of the world your character inhabits.  Since this is not an analytical paper, you will not be “citing” sources in the body of the text, however, you must attach a bibliography page listing the course readings you consulted to reconstruct the historical context.  Though it is not required, it might be useful to consult other outside sources that will help you to capture the details of a specific historical time period.

 

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Since many of you may have no previous experience writing an oral history essay or a piece of historical fiction, if you have any questions, doubts, or confusions about what you are being asked to do or what I expect your final product to look like, be sure to ask me before you begin writing.  I will answer emails promptly (usually the same day you send them) or speak with me in person. I can also show you a sample of an “A” paper for both assignments.