History 502
Fall 2005
Final Paper Assignment

As indicated on the syllabus, the final paper is a 10-12-page double-spaced paper due in my mailbox by noon December 12.  There are two options for the paper, outlined below.  For either option your task will be to place the assignment into the context of our readings and discussions.  You should make sure that your work is analytical and not merely descriptive.

By November 14 you will need to provide me with a written (or emailed) prospectus, outlining the sources you will consult and the questions you hope to answer.

1.  Newspaper Assignment

Read roughly a decade of any North American newpaper published before 1860.  Do not read all the issues during the decade you choose, but a few dozen issues distributed in a way that makes sense for the questions you are asking.  If you are examining the 1770s, for example, it probably makes sense to concentrate your reading in the middle years of the decade.  If you wish to read a newspaper that had a print run of less than a decade, talk to me first.

Use your reading to learn as much as possible about the society represented by your newspaper.  For this reason you should not use online newspapers, such as the Pennsylvania Gazette, without consulting with me, because online versions typically do not include some of the most revealing parts of newspapers:  advertisements, runaway slave ads, miscellaneous notices.

Questions to consider:  What do you learn from reading these newspapers?  How does this fit (or not fit) with our readings and discussions?  What is the intended audience of the newspapers?  What issues were important to those readers?  What limitations remain for historians learning about your period through newspapers?

Please note that the assignment is not to write a formal research paper as you would be expected to do in a 600-level research seminar.  You do not need to have one argument that you support with multiple examples.  Your conclusions may be tentative, your ideas may be speculative, and your evidence may be too weak to "prove" anything.  But your paper should be analytical and it should draw on quotations and specific examples from the newspapers and course readings.  If you need to do a little outside reading in secondary sources, you are free to do so.

Finding Newspapers:

You are fortunate that UB has an outstanding collection of early American newspapers in microform.  These have recently been moved to the Capen Multimedia Center, 2nd floor, Undergraduate Library.  There are two different collections.  For newspapers to 1820, you need to go to the Basement level (actually the ground level) of the Undergrad Library, to the very end of the stacks.  There you will see several shelves of blue boxes with early American newspapers on microcard.  Simply browse the boxes, which are arranged by state/colony and then by individual newspapers within that. 

Microcard (also called Microprint) is a medium that went out of style almost as soon as it was invented.  It is an opaque medium that needs to be read on the opaque viewers upstairs in the Multimedia Center.  You will not be able to make photocopies. 

For newspapers from roughly 1820 to 1860, use the Early American Newspapers series on microfilm, held in the Multimedia Center.  These have call numbers from AN256 to AN321.  You will find six drawers of film before the large collection of New York Times, and even more drawers after.  Not all the microfilm in these drawers are Early American Newspapers, but many are.  Simply browse the boxes to find something that looks interesting.

Or, if you have a specific place in mind, you can do a BISON keyword search as follows:
k=oswego and newspapers
This will return results for the Oswego (NY) Palladium, which the library has from 1819 to 1843.

2. Lesson Plan Option

If you prefer, you may combine course readings and some outside readings to help develop a lesson plan.  This may take the form of a middle-school or high-school lesson plan, or a college lecture.  In addition to course readings, you should read two books (or a book and two articles) not on the syllabus to give you greater depth of understanding in your area.  Ideally, these readings should have been published in the last decade or two, so you can be sure that your students will be receiving the most up-to-date interpretations.  You should choose the outside readings in consultation with me.

This option is limited only by your creativity.  You may include Powerpoint presentations, music, hands-on activities, field trips for your students:  whatever you think will help them learn about the topic in an age-appropriate yet sophisticated way.
 
You should include a section of your lesson plan that discusses how the readings shape your presentation.