10th GRADE FINAL HISTORY PAPER (2024)
For your final history paper, you have the opportunity to engage with a region and moment in time that really excites you. In order to deepen your understanding of this period, you are going to look through the lens of a particular artifact. An artifact could be a written document, a speech, a piece of art or literature, a film, an advertisement or poster, or an object. However, it can NOT be a source we have read for homework.
In your paper you will examine your artifact, and your paper should also consider how the artifact helps your reader understand the society in which it was created. That is, how does your artifact shed light on its larger society or a relevant historical phenomenon? The successful paper will effectively balance the narrow (your artifact) and the general (the context into which your artifact was born).
For example, you might read Grimms’ fairy tales and decide to write about how it demonstrates nineteenth-century German nationalism and its emphasis on familial and social roles. Or you could look at one of Touissant L’Ouverture’s speeches and say how it relates to different visions of “radicalness” in the Haitian Revolution. Or you could look at Emile Zola’s “J’Accuse!” letter and discuss how it is a lens to understand anti-Semitism in Third Republic France.
As you think about writing your paper, you should consider the following questions to help you make your argument:
What is the artifact?
Who made it?
What was the context (political, social, economic) in which it was produced?
What does your artifact show about the larger society in which it was created (I.e. why is the artifact important historically)? (The answer to this question is your thesis.)
As you write your paper, your analysis should consider the following questions:
What was the creator’s position/bias/political frame of reference?
What was the creator’s intention (to protest something? to support something? to celebrate something? to catalyze something?)
Who was the intended audience?
What were responses to the artifact? Why?
Did the artifact have any impact at the time?
What do historians think about this artifact’s importance?
Requirements:
You will submit a paper that is no less than 4 pages and not more than 6 pages, double-spaced in 12-point, Times Roman font. Cover page and bibliography do not count toward this total. This paper should include a bibliography of all sources cited in Chicago Style.
Proper documentation and correct citation (bibliography and footnotes) in Chicago style of primary sources and secondary literature is essential in either footnote or endnote form.
There are NO extensions. Late papers will be marked down one grade step for each late day including weekends (e.g., B+ to B; B to B-).
You must keep up with all benchmarks, and all benchmarks must be submitted through Google Classroom. Failure to submit a benchmark in a timely fashion will also adversely affect your final paper grade.
Each benchmark will have the expectations/ basic rubric attached. Read them thoroughly and talk to me if any of them are unclear.
What You Need to Do
1)Pick a Topic and Artifact:
Spend the next week thinking about what aspect or period of global history (NOT from the U.S.) you would like to explore–either a topic we have already covered, one we will cover in the future, or one that we might not even get to. (But nothing beyond 2001.) This will involve broad thinking and reading. Are you interested in imperialism, race, workers, the bourgeoisie, revolutions, feminist movements, industrialization, empire, war, a particular state at a particular time, technological change, farming and rural life, any war, corporations, reform, conservatism, radicalism, communism, immigration, urbanization, family life, sexuality, childhood, financial panics, civil liberties, cultural movements like the New Life Movement (China), Dadaism (Europe) or Abstract Expressionism, the Great Depression in Europe, the Holocaust, the Cold War, just to name a few? There are obviously hundreds of topics to choose from. To begin exploring which topic you might want to select, you can examine your class notes, the textbook, the internet, and, most importantly, articles and books that can be digitally accessed from the Trinity or New York Public libraries. This is one of the few times when using non-scholarly websites is appropriate. But you should definitely spend time looking at digitized scholarly materials pertaining to different periods and themes. You should also talk to me. Remember that you’re going to live with this topic for almost an entire semester. Select a topic that truly speaks to you.
I want to write about the Koh-i-noor diamond, and i read a book on it and go tinfo on all the leaders, so how it moved from Mughal empire, startng with babur, himyauan, shah jahan, nader shah, ahmad shah durrani, timur shah, shah shuja, ranjit singh, and then to the british
