History
342
World
Since 1945
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 origins of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the Great Leap Forward in
China, the Chernobyl disaster in the USSR, the UN’s role in the Rwandan
genocide, or the 1964 escalation of US involvement in the Vietnamese conflict.
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, “The Arab-Israeli Conflict” is too broad, while “The 1981
assassination of Anwar Sadat” is a more manageable topic. Similarly, “The 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 was Sadat killed and why was this a significant
event?” 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 was Sadat killed….” 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”: “By making peace with Israel, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat also made
many enemies in the Arab world. His
death at the hands of extremists within the Muslim Brotherhood would have serious
ramifications throughout the region.
Contemporary reactions to his death in Arab, Israeli, and American
sources show that, even at the time, many realized his assassination had great
significance.”
Once
you have picked your topic, look for sources that are likely to give you
different points of view. If you are
doing the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, it makes sense to look for US,
Soviet, and Cuban sources since it is very unlikely that these three sources
will be telling the same story. If you
are doing any aspect of the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian crisis, you should try to
find sources from both the Arab and Israeli perspectives. If you are doing a
Latin American topic, try to find at least some sources that give the Latin
American perspective.
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. These are brownish-red
bound volumes located on the table behind the reference desk on the main floor
of Oviatt library. If your topic is the Yom Kippur War (1973), go to the 1973
volume and look up keywords that are related to your topic: “Sadat,” “Yom
Kippur War,” “Middle East,” “Egypt,” “Israel,” and so on. A list of cites will appear that give you
the date and page # of the story. Then go upstairs to the microfilm room and
find the New York Times on microfilm. If you cannot find the specific
date you’re looking for, ask the assistant for help.
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. For example, Khrushchev
wrote an autobiography that would fill in the Soviet side if your topic were
the Cuban Missile Crisis. Anwar Sadat’s widow wrote a memoir of her husband
(available in English) that would “count” as an Arab source. The Palestinian activist Hanan Ashrawi has
also written extensively on the conflict with Israel. These books and articles
would also “count” as a Palestinian source if she were directly describing her
view of the event you are examining.
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. (Note that this
link will only work if you are on campus using a CSUN computer.)
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
Latin American Network Information Center, http://www1.lanic.utexas.edu/, will be
invaluable if you are doing a Central or South American topic.
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 Rwanda
archive:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/36/index-ja.html
and the China archive:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/55/index-b.html)
For
more Chinese sources, see:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/eastasia/eastasiasbook.html#China%20Since%20World%20War%20II
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, 2004.
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, the date, and the page number(s).
Examples: Washington Post,
February 29, 1980, 1, 36.
London Times,
September 5, 1968, 2, 23.
(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.