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1. Topic
Selection (already completed)
2. Thesis
Page (10% of final grade) Due March 15th
The first stage of the project was
your selection of a topic, of course, and the development of some questions
to ask of your sources (if you have not done this yet, get to it!). The second step to take is to develop and
present your hypothesis, that is, the answers to which you have arrived so
far or hope to arrive; your page should, therefore, include a thesis
statement, or a succinct summary of your argument.
Creating a thesis is not easy;
actually, it is perhaps the most difficult stage of the whole exercise.
However, if you do not start verbalizing your interest, which usually leads
to narrowing it, your project will be larger than life and undoable.
Your Thesis Page, which can
actually be 1-2 pages in length, is a short paper describing your project. It
should include the topic statement, thesis statement, a preliminary list of
primary sources, the location of those sources, a brief summary of work
already done in the area, the organization/sections of your essay, and the
anticipated results of the project. You may organize it into separate
sections (for example, “Topic & Argument”, “Primary Sources”,
“Historiography”, “Intended Sections”, “Preliminary or Anticipated Results”)
or write it as one cohesive essay.
Below I have listed a series of
questions which should help you develop your thesis. The language,
borrowed from the History Department at Bowdoin College, is pretty basic; do not be
intellectually insulted.
How
do I develop a good thesis?
Here
is an example of how you might arrive at a strong thesis.
Start with a topic, such as discrimination against Japanese Americans during
World War II. (Note that this is a very general area of interest. At this
stage, it is utterly unguided. You cannot write a paper on this topic,
because you have no path into the material.)
Develop a question around it, as in "why did government officials allow
discrimination against Japanese Americans?" (You now have a question
that helps you probe your topic; your efforts have a direction, which is
answering the question you have posed for yourself. Note that there are a
great many questions which you might ask of your general topic. You should
expect in the course of your research to consider many such possibilities.
Which ones are the most interesting? Which ones are possible given the
constraints of the assignment?)
Develop a unique perspective on your question which answers it: Government
officials allowed discrimination against Japanese Americans not because it
was in the nation's interest, but because it provided a concrete enemy for
people to focus on. (This is a thesis statement. You have answered the
question you posed, and done so with a rather concrete and specific
statement. Your answer offers a novel and thoughtful way of thinking about
the material. Once the terms of the thesis are clarified [what was the
"national interest"; what was the meaning and value of having
"a concrete enemy for people to focus on"?], you are on your way to
a solid paper.)
Constructing a tentative thesis (hypothesis)
Here
is a somewhat formulaic approach to constructing a tentative thesis. It is
just one possibility among many.
A concessive clause ("although such and such"). If you do not
concede something, you will appear strident and unreasonable. By conceding
something, your point will stand out, for you will have contrasted it with an
opposing position.
The main clause. This is the heart of your argument -- the thing you will
prove. The subject of the main clause should be the subject of the paper. Do
not present it in the form of "I will show" or "I hope to
prove."
A "because" clause. This will force you to summarize support for
your thesis as concisely as possible.
Example: Although the Scopes Trial was a legal farce, it reflected deep
ambivalence in American thinking, because so many conflicting attitudes met
headlong in Dayton, Tennessee. (Not a great thesis, but a good
start. What were those conflicting attitudes? What was the key to their
conflict? This thesis should be re-visited later with these questions in
mind.)
Another approach to thesis construction
Here
is another exercise that might help you develop your thesis. On a separate
sheet of paper, complete the following sentences:
Dear Reader: I want to convince you that. . . . [This is a hypothesis]
The main reasons why you should believe me are that. . . . [This is a summary
of your evidence and logic.]
You should care about my thesis because. . . . [This provides the seeds of
your conclusion, and checks the significance of your thesis.]
Refining the thesis
A good
thesis does not spring to life from nothing. A good thesis is the product of
a discussion you have about your source material and its meaning. Here is
what that process might look like:
Start with a question about your source material, as explained above.
How did African-American women fare after slavery ended?
Create a hypothesis, that is, a tentative answer to the question. I suggest
using the formula above.
Although freedom made life better in general for the slaves, African-American
women fared worse than African-American men under freedom, because society
sought to impose sexist notions of gender roles on emancipated black
families.
Then, considering the contents of your primary sources, ask these questions:
Is my hypothesis really true? What evidence at my disposal makes it false?
How can I modify my hypothesis to make it true?
For instance, you may have some source information that suggests black women
were beaten by their husbands when free, but you might also have some that
suggests their husbands protected them from whites and kept them from working
long hard hours in the fields. Perhaps it was only in the realm of
relative equality within the family that women lost out in freedom.
Develop a new, more complex hypothesis by modifying the old one. There
usually is no need to start from scratch; simply alter what you started with.
Although freedom made life better in general for African-American women,
freedwomen may have lost some of the power they had held in the family under
slavery, because freedom subjected them to the patriarchal domination of a
sexist society.
More suggestions for developing a good thesis
Developing
a good thesis is usually the most difficult part of writing a paper; do not
expect it to come easily.
After developing a hypothesis, read through it again, searching for vague
words and phrases that "let you off the hook," or permit you to not
make strong arguments. Underline such phrases, and re-word them to be more
specific. In every un-refined thesis, there is a word or phrase which remains
unclear or unexplained. Find it and "unpack" it in your
introductory paragraph.
You should start thinking about possible theses from the very start of your
paper preparation, but you need to examine your primary sources before you
can develop a strong thesis. It is impossible to develop a good thesis
without already having begun to analyze the primary sources which supply your
evidence. How can you know what is even possible to argue if you haven't looked
closely at your data?
In a history paper, you must state your conclusion (thesis) at the outset.
But this does not mean you have to write it that way. Often, you will
not know exactly how you will make that complex thesis until you have gotten
deeply into the material. Start your draft with a tentative thesis paragraph
(perhaps constructed using the formula above). Once you have written a draft
of the paper, go back and re-write the thesis paragraph -- you'll have a much
better sense of what you just argued, and you'll come up with a better
thesis. Then go back over the body and see if it supports this complex
thesis. Good writing is a process of continually evaluating your work this
way -- of constantly asking yourself if your evidence and analysis supports
your thesis. Remember, the thesis is not the starting point of your
exploration, but the result of it.
3.
Annotated Bibliography (10%) Also due March 15th
The next stage of
your project, which should happen concurrently with the creation of your
Thesis Page, is the compilation of an annotated bibliography. This a
preliminary list of sources you have and/or will consult when conducting your
research. The annotated bibliography has two main purposes: first, to make
sure that you have started to critically engage your sources; second, to
allow me to recommend further sources and/or comment on the sources presented
in the bibliography. You are not expected to have read them in full,
but must at the very least be able to pinpoint each author’s thesis, his/her
methodology, and why this particular source will be of help to you in
developing your essay.
Below is a
description borrowed in part from Cornell’s Research Library, which should
help you compile your own annotated bibliography.
What is an annotated bibliography?
An annotated
bibliography is a list of citations to books, articles, and documents. Each
citation is followed by a brief descriptive and evaluative paragraph,
the annotation. The purpose of the annotation is to inform the reader of the
relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited.
The process
Creating an
annotated bibliography calls for the application of a variety of intellectual
skills: concise exposition, succinct analysis, and informed library research.
First, locate and
record citations to books, periodicals, and documents that may contain useful
information and ideas on your topic. Briefly examine and review
the actual items. Then choose those works that provide a variety of
perspectives on your topic.
Cite the book, article, or document using the appropriate style.
Write a concise
annotation that summarizes the central theme and scope of the book or
article. Include one or more sentences that
(a) evaluate the authority or background of the author,
(b) comment on the intended audience,
(c) compare or contrast this work with another you have cited, or
(d) explain how this work illuminates your
bibliography topic.
The correct format for the
annotations
Here you have no
choice; historians use either the Chicago Manual of Style or Kate Turabian’s book which is required in
this course.
Sample annotated entry for a book:
Phillippy, Patricia. Women, Death,
and Literature in Post-Reformation England. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Phillippy’s book studies the
Reformation’s impact on the gendering of mourning. The author argues that women’s excessive mourning contrasts with what
contemporaries viewed as the appropriately stoic responses to death
attributed to men. The main strength of the book is that it constantly
keeps in mind the fact that the voices of the women she studies were always
mediated and constructed by their male counterparts, but that women were
ultimately able to appropriate cultural representations of grief.
Women, in fact, were able to validate in their writings what others saw as
“immoderate” grief, creating a literary genre where they, as women and
mourners, could be the subjects. This source illuminates my
research by explaining one of the ways in which women were able to manipulate
constructions of gender, and create a special literary space for themselves.
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