Book Test: Taken Hostage (Instructions)
Instructions for Book Essay- Taken Hostage: The Iran Hostage Crisis and America’s First Encounter with Radical Islam
The purpose of this assignment is to measure your ability to analyze and explain key themes in the book. It is NOT designed to determine how well you can find and regurgitate OTHER people’s analyses of the book. Therefore, please be forewarned that plagiarism can result in a failing grade for the course (see syllabus). Keep in mind that taking someone else’s analysis and merely changing a word here and there is still plagiarism. I WILL be checking for plagiarism using the Turnitin system, to which you will have access when you submit your assignment.
-You must submit a new assignment. If you took this class with any other instructor at Galveston College, and you try and pass it off as a new submission, you will be given a grade of zero for self-plagiarism. All assignments in this class are required to be newly created for the purpose of this class. No recycling!
You may use direct quotes from Taken Hostage; no other sources are to be used. Be sparing in your use of direct quotes; keep them short and to a minimum. Your similarity report from Turnitin should contain no more than 25% non-original text. I’m much more interested in your analysis and summation than in reading dozens of direct quotes daisy-chained together.
Format: Type double-spaced in Chicago Manual of Style/Turabian format, using footnotes or endnotes to cite your work (NO MLA/APA IN-TEXT CITATIONS). Remember that you’ll need to cite not only direct quotes, but also ideas/facts you get from the book that are not general knowledge. Include a bibliography/references page (NO WORK’S CITED), which will contain a single entry, the Taken Hostage book.
Length: 900 or more (body of the essay) Note: I will grade only the first 1000 words.
Font: a standard 12 font such as Ariel or New Times Roman
Save your essay as a file in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) or Rich Text Format (.rtf) and turn it into the appropriate Canvas assignment item. (Be sure to include your last name as part of your file name.) Here is your prompt:
PROMPT: An important topic in this book is the role of Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi (“the Shah”) in the Iranian hostage crisis. Contrast the reasons for the Shah’s increasing unpopularity with the Iranian people with the reasons that the U.S. government steadfastly supported him. Support your discussion with specific examples. Conclude your essay with an analysis of why the hostage crisis is important in U.S. history.
Start your essay with a short introductory paragraph, then organize it per the elements in the rubric below. Note that the parts of the essay are NOT weighted equally.
Grading Rubric for Essay*
Overall organization of essay and writing clarity (grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc.) 20%
Reasons for Shah’s unpopularity with Iranians- clarity of explanation and support with relevant, specific examples 30%
Reasons for U.S. support of Shah- clarity of explanation and support with relevant, specific examples 30%
Conclusion-Importance of hostage crisis in U.S. history; clarity of argument and support with relevant, specific examples 20%
Due: July 5, 2021 at 11:59pm
