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.