Students will devote weeks 10 to 16 of the History Practicum to a
research project. The end product will be a four-six page
bibliographical analysis of your topic and an annotated bibliography of
seven to 15 items.
This semester we have covered a wide range of conflicts and
developments concerning religion and violence from early Christianity
through the early modern period. Your final assignment will take
you through the major steps of writing a research paper, and toward
that end you are to select some incident connected with religion and
violence in the premodern world. It can be an aspect of a major
military confrontation or an example of human violence on a smaller
scale--e.g., martyrs in early Christianity or the Reformation, violence
against Jews, Christian or Islamic views of holy war, conversion and
violence in the New World, etc. Geographically, you are free to
select your conflict from anywhere in the premodern world (from
approximately the 2nd to the 17th century).
This project will be completed in four stages. Failure to
complete any stage of this topic on time will significantly affect your
grade for the project as a whole and will make it much more difficult
to produce a high quality final paper.
Stage
1: Preliminary Project Statement - Due Week 10
The first stage in this project is to decide on a topic for your final
paper and describe the topic in a paragraph. Think carefully as
you choose a topic as defining your subject is one of the most
important skills that a historian must develop. It is easy to
select an issue that is too big (The Crusades) or two small (the use of
naval tactics during the Fourth Crusade). I will be reviewing
your topics, and if you have some difficulty, we will make
modifications as the project develops.
Stage
2: Revised Project Statement & Initial Bibliography - Due
Week 12
After a library workshop week 11, you will revise your project
statement and list three or four initial sources you will use in your
paper (at least two secondary and one primary). By this point you
should have a much clearer focus and have begun to collect and read
relevant material for your bibliographic essay. This statement is
due in my office by Friday, 11/13. [I will be in my office from
at least 1:00 to 3:00. If you hand it in earlier or later (no
later than 5:00 Friday please!) you may slip it under my office door.]
Stage 3: Partial Annotated
Bibliography - Due Week 14 This week you must hand in a list of at least two annotated
sources that you are using for your paper. Eventually you will
need to include at least 7 annotated items with your final paper.
Click here for information about how to prepare an annotated
bibliography. You must hand in these annotations by Wed.
11/25, i.e. before you leave
for Thanksgiving weekend!
Stage 4: Final Paper: Bibliographic Essay - Due Wed., 12/9 or in my office by
Friday, 12/11 by noon
Your final paper will be a 4-6 page bibliographic essay on your topic
with an annotated bibliography of 6 to 14 items. Detailed
information about a historiographical or bibliographic essay is
provided on the page linked here. A model
bibliographic essay
written by a student in the history practicum last semester (fall, '06)
is also provided here. Please consult these two websites to be
sure that you understand the nature of the assignment! For proper bibliographic format
for this and other history papers, use the Chicago Manual of Style or
Kate Turabian. A short on-line version of these manuals is
available throught the University of Wisconsin Writing Center
website. Please use the format provided on their Chicago/Turabian
Documentation pages. Regarding the content of your
annotation, various approaches are
possible. I suggest you use the
the "combination"
approach to annotation listed on the Wisconsin website.
(Click on the question about content and scroll down for the
combination approach and an example.)