History
498
Fall
2010
Devine
If you can follow the instructions on this hand-out, you will be well on your way to producing a good paper.
Since
the purpose of this exercise is to explore how a single event can be
interpreted differently based upon one’s point of view, I recommend picking a
topic that is likely to have produced different responses depending on the
sources you consult. Such topics might
include the reactions of China, the USSR, and the American press to the 1964
escalation of US involvement in the Vietnamese conflict; the significance of
the Tet Offensive; the reactions of various nations to the 1954 Geneva
Conference; the decision of the US to back France (and the not the Vietninh) in
the wake of World War II.
All
of these events were controversial and therefore were interpreted differently
by different nations, so your sources will provide you with varying points of
view.
Try
to focus your paper on a specific event.
For example, “US Involvement in Vietnam War” is too broad, but “Reaction
to the Mai Lai massacre of March 1968” would be fine.
In
focusing on a specific event, it will be helpful in giving your paper a
structure if you pose a question to yourself that your paper will seek to
answer. For example, “Why did both US Allies in Europe and the Communist
nations oppose US escalation in Vietnam in 1965? How did their reasoning for their opposition
differ?” You can then use your sources
to answer this question.
You
should not write in your opening paragraph, “In this essay I will
try to answer the question, Why did the US decide to back the French in
Vietnam?….” or anything like that. Have you ever read an Los Angeles Times
or Newsweek article that began, “In this article I will….” There is a reason why you haven’t – it’s bad
form.
Instead,
directly state your thesis without using the first person
“I.”
Once
you have picked your topic, look for sources that are likely to give you
different points of view. If you are
doing the significance of Geneva, for example, it makes sense to look for US,
Soviet, Chinese or Vietnamese sources since it is very unlikely that these four
sources will be telling the same story.
Newspaper
accounts will provide the easiest access to your topic. Read the straight news stories as well as the
editorial page. Editorials and articles
by columnists that appear on the editorial pages will likely be more helpful in
writing your essay since they tend to be more interpretative and offer insight
on not only what happened, but why an event happened and why it
is significant.
To
find newspaper stories pertinent to your topic, you should use the New York
Times index, which can be accessed on line.
The articles as well can be accessed on line or on microfilm in Oviatt
Library.
Magazine
articles are also useful sources. To find articles on your topic, go to the Reader’s
Guide to Periodical Literature (also located on the tables behind the
reference desk – if you can’t find it, ask the reference librarian.) Choose the
volume that covers the year of your event and look for keywords. When you find
relevant articles, write down the magazine’s name and the date and page number
of the article. Then go to the on-line catalog to see if the library has the
magazine on the shelves or in storage. If it does, take down the call number
and head to the fourth floor to find it. (All bound periodicals are on the
fourth floor.)
Though
these two indexes are useful for tracking down American sources, it may be more
difficult to find foreign sources in English produced at the time of the event
you choose (though the Economist and the London Times [both
British sources] are both available at Oviatt Library). If you’re having
trouble locating contemporary foreign sources, you might look for autobiographies
of those who participated in or were witness to the event you are
exploring. The best way to find these
autobiographies is simply to do an author search on the on-line catalog,
or, for articles, to do a keyword search using Expanded Academic Index.
There
are also compilations of primary documents that can be helpful. The best way to find them is to do a keyword
search on the on line library catalog and to include “sources” as
one of your keywords. Or, if you know
the title of a book on your topic, look it up and then scroll down to the
subject links (in blue) and click on them to see if they will lead you to
further sources (they usually do!)
There
are numerous foreign sources in English on the internet:
For
a good source of documents from all over the world, see:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook4.html#since1945
The
Cold War International History Project site has numerous primary sources and
allows you to navigate the site by region or country: http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=topics.home&topic_id=1409
CNN’s
Cold War site also has a variety of translated documents from various
countries:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/kbank/documents.html
As
does The National Security Archive: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/
and
World
History Archives: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/index.html
(Don’t
be put off by the strange home page, just use the search function and enter the
country you are writing about. For example, here’s the link to the China archive:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/55/index-b.html)
If
you want basic background information on a particular country, go to the
Library of Congress site: http://www.loc.gov/rr/research-centers.html
and click on the appropriate link under “International Collections.”
Of
course, www.google.com is a useful search
engine. The best way to get good hits is
to enter the country or the topic you’re writing about and then the word
“documents” or “primary sources.”
After
giving this some consideration, I’ve come up with a simple system
that I want all of you to follow. Please
follow these very simple instructions:
The
last page of your paper should be a “References” page. You should list all of your sources and
assign a number to each reference. Then, each time you cite a particular source
in the text of your essay, you should cite its number and the page # in parentheses.
For
example, if the source you’re citing is #1 on your reference page and you’re
quoting from page 47 of that source, you should write the following in the text
of your paper: (#1, p. 47) If your source is a web site (and therefore does not
have a page number), it will be enough to do the following in the text: (#5,
internet). On your References page, you
must give a number to each source and a full citation of each source.
Web
page references should include the entire URL and the date you
accessed it.
Example:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/01/documents/tehran.html,
November 12, 2010.
Books
should give the author, title, place of publication, publisher, and date of
publication. Publication information is
usually on the title page. If there is no year of publication given there, it’s
on the next page (the copyright page).
Example:
Thomas L. Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem (New York: Farrar, Strauss
& Giroux, 1989)
Magazine
articles should give the title of the article, the author (if the author is
identified), the name of the magazine, its publication date (May, 1967) or
(January 28, 1972), and the pages that the article encompasses.
Example:
Whittaker Chambers, “Truman Announces New Policy” Time (March 31, 1948),
34-5.
Newspaper
articles require only the name of the paper and the date.
Examples: Washington Post,
February 29, 1980.
London Times,
September 5, 1968.
(Note
that with the exception of the New York Times, only the
name of the paper and not the city is underlined when citing
newspapers.)
The
minimum requirement is three sources – at least two of which must be
non-U.S. These sources must be referenced
and discussed at some length in the body of your paper. They must be either primary sources
(published at the time of your event) or indirectly primary (written by people
who were eyewitnesses to your event).
You are welcome (and encouraged) to use as many primary sources as you
like as well as any secondary sources that would help in providing background
material. If you do the minimum
amount of work, using the minimum number of sources, you should
expect a passing grade, but not necessarily a high grade.
After
reading the first paragraph your reader should already know:
1) what your topic (or event)
is
2) what three perspectives you
will be examining
3) an indication from you as to
why these three perspectives have different interpretations of your event
or why the event you’ve chosen is significant.
There
are two obvious ways to organize the body of your paper:
1) by perspective (For example,
the British view, followed by the American view, followed by the Soviet view)
2) by theme (how each of your
three sources interpret different facets of your topic)
The
conclusion should not summarize or restate what you’ve
said in the body of the essay. That’s fine for a twenty-page research paper,
but not a short assignment like this one.
The conclusion should briefly tie together the essay and offer a parting
thought. For example,
“The
divergence of opinion on the origins of the 1967 war demonstrates the
difficulty of reaching consensus in discussions of Middle East politics. Even nations like the United States and
France, allies in the Cold War, offered clashing assessments of the conflict’s
causes. No surprise, then, that Egyptian
and Israeli newspaper editorials, ostensibly reacting to the same set of facts,
reached entirely different conclusions.”
Do not
begin your concluding paragraph with, “In conclusion,” I know your junior high teachers told you to
do that. They were wrong.
The
paper’s minimum length is 2000 words (which translates to about 6 ½ pages). It is due December 13th at the
beginning of our class meeting.