Historical Research

Week 2

Selection and Defense of Topic
Students will identify a significant historical event and briefly defend why this event is significant and worthy of study.
The topic selection and defense is due at the end of this week. See the Syllabus section "Due Dates for Assignments & Exams" for due date information.
Week 5

Annotated Bibliography
Students will assemble at least five scholarly, academic references that will be used to write the paper. Non-scholarly references may be used on a minimal basis if they provide information that cannot be identified in the scholarly references. A minimum of 10 different references should be selected. All references must be cited using APA format and assembled as the bibliography for the paper. An approximate length of this bibliography is between 1-2 pages. See DocSharing for a sample Annotated Bibliography.

WEEK 7
Your final paper is a culmination of seven weeks of work and, in order to justify the substantial amount of time we have devoted to this project, your final papers should be 8-10 pages in length (which excludes the title, abstract, and references pages that also must be submitted) and contain a minimum of ten sources. Papers that fall short in page length, depth, sources, or overall presentation will receive lower grades. Students that meet or exceed these expectations usually get the higher grades on this project. Again, 8-10 pages in the body of the paper are required. This excludes the title, abstract, and reference pages. In short, you must write 8-10 pages and not count these other pages toward that total.

Project

This course culminates with an original research paper based on your historical research. The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze a historical event using concepts that we have learned in class. The first step is to identify a significant historical event that occured between 1945 and 2001 (e.g., the Truman Doctrine, the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, 9/11, etc.) and defend your selection as a significant event. The paper should include the following:

Identify and describe the historical event.
Analyze the historical and contemporary causes of the event.
Analyze different historical interpretations of this event.
Evaluate the later consequences of this event.
The final paper should be 8-10 pages in length and use proper APA formatting.