Paper Assignment
For the paper assignment, you will select three (and only three) Milestone Documents and quote them to construct an argument about change over time. For example, you might select three laws relating to civil rights and use those documents to assess how those laws either expanded or constricted what African Americans could do. You might also look at three different aspects of the same thing, like different changes in women’s social roles caused by the modern feminist movement. You do not have to restrict your selection of documents to those which are assigned in this course, but you do have to restrict them to the Milestone Documents available from the post-1877 period of American History.
The final paper should be between three and four double-spaced pages with normal one inch margins. On February 17th, we will discuss the Milestone Documents website and possible topics. On April 11th, I will be holding voluntary paper meetings with people who need help. By April 18th, you will have to e-mail me a list of the three documents that you have chosen and an explanation (a sentence should suffice) of how you will tie them together in the final paper. Failure to do this part of the assignment will result in an immediate failing grade. We will go over those answers in class on April 18th. The paper will be due on April 29th. Interested students are also free to send me a draft paper before April 11th which I will return in time for you to make changes before the final paper is due.
Any form of academic dishonesty will result in a failing grade for the entire course. This includes plagiarism, the taking of words and/or ideas of another and passing them off as your own. If another person’s work is quoted directly in a formal paper, this must be indicated with quotation marks and a citation. If you do not understand this definition of plagiarism, it is your responsibility to discuss this topic with me further. Furthermore, to repeat what it says in the syllabus already, failure to complete any of the assignments for this class will result in your failing the entire course. That includes this paper assignment.
You can find the complete list of Milestone Documents here. Quoting each Milestone Document is a requirement of the assignment. All quotations must be cited or your paper will not be accepted. For purposes of this assignment, your paper should use the citation information provided with each Milestone Document text under the heading “How To Cite.”
Please only use documents from the US History 1877-Present section of the Milestone Documents website. QUOTING THE INTRODUCTIONS TO THE DOCUMENTS DOES NOT COUNT AS QUOTING THE DOCUMENTS THEMSELVES. Failure to reach the minimum of three documents will result in a failing grade for the assignment. Do not use any source other than Milestone Documents or your paper will not be accepted. You are free to use Milestone Documents textbook articles if you like, but you still must include a minimum of three primary source documents.
Pre-Paperwriting Exercises
1. What documents might you use in a paper along with with Andrew Carnegie’s “Wealth?” What might the argument be?
2. How would you introduce and explain this quotation from Frederick Jackson Turner’s “The Significance of the Frontier in American History?”:
“The United States lies like a huge page in the history of society. Line by line as we read this continental page from West to East we find the record of social evolution. It begins with the Indian and the hunter; it goes on to tell of the disintegration of savagery by the entrance of the trader, the pathfinder of civilization; we read the annals of the pastoral stage in ranch life; the exploitation of the soil by the raising of unrotated crops of corn and wheat in sparsely settled farming communities; the intensive culture of the denser farm settlement; and finally the manufacturing organization with city and factory system. . . .”
3. Introduce and explain the significance of this quotation from Eugene V. Debs’ speech before the founding convention of the IWW:
“The trades-union movement is today under the control of the capitalist class. It is preaching capitalist economics. It is serving capitalist purposes. Proof of it, positive and overwhelming, appears on every hand.”
4. Eric Cunningham offered us three rules for what we should figure out during our first pass through a primary source document. They were:
“• the substance of the document,
• the historical circumstances and contexts of the document, and
• the historical significance of the document.”
What are the best things to look for the next time you read it for the purposes of completing this assignment?
