Instructions & Topic
Task:
• Write an essay of about 600-1000 words, excluding references, using any combination of 4 or more documents (primary sources) from the Document Exercise folder and/or any of documents provided for our Weekly Topic discussions through.
• Compare at least three (3) eras in terms of one (1) topical area: What do you see as the key similarities and differences among these eras on this subject? [You'll get extra points for covering all eras.]
o Areas:
watershed events
ways of seeing the world - ‘maps'/models
wars/warfare
revolts/revolutions
empires/colonialism
science/technology/medicine
religion/philosophy
social organization - classes/roles and importance of family/society vs individual
views of ethnicity, nationality, and citizenship
roles and status of women
political organization/types of government/rulers
the arts/architecture/literature
economies -- industry/agriculture/commerce
o Eras:
Renaissance, Reformation
Age of Absolutism and Revolutions
Industrial Revolution and Nineteenth Century up to World War I
World wars and postwar era to about 1960 (Note: You MUST include this era.)
• NOTE: Do NOT write on the same topical area you used for your midterm exam essay - for example, if you wrote your midterm about women, choose religion, political organization, or some other topic.
• Support the points in your essay by including specific examples from specific documents. Be sure to use quotation marks to identify any directly-borrowed material. Follow that quotation with at least a short citation to the source.
• Use at least 4 documents (primary sources -- not just discussion in your textbook or a website that simply talks about the topic). A key part of the goal is to let the sources (of the time you're discussing) speak for themselves - not say what someone else said they said. You may use any of those in the folder provided in the Document Exercise folder. You may use additional primary sources you might find on the internet. However, if you do that, let me know, so I can check and be sure they're suitable and to insure that you're giving me a valid reference - not cribbing something from someone else's work, which is plagiarism.
• Clearly identify where you got each example. if the document is longer than two pages, indicate what page or pages you're referring to. Include a complete list of documents with full citations in a separate "Worked Cited" section at the end of your essay. For example:
One Egyptian folk tale told of a magician who found that his wife was having an affair with a page. The magician formed a crocodile from clay and sent it to eat the page when he came again.
This tale shows both the Egyptians' ideas about magic and about the proper punishment for adultery.
Works Cited
Egyptian Folk Tale (11th Dynasty) - "An Egyptian Folk Tale" - "Tales of the Magicians - Khafra's Tale" in MyHistoryLab Multimedia Library,
http://wps.prenhall.com/hss_frankforter_west_2/95/24476/6266052.cw/index.html downloaded 6 August 2011
• Your essay should run about 600 to 1000 words, excluding your references. (I won't penalize you for running longer than that, but if you're getting more than about 1300 words, you're probably doing something wrong. Let me know, so I can look at it for you and maybe help you out.)
• Submit your essay for grading using a link in Learning Modules. I'd encourage you to upload a draft at least 2 or 3 days before the essay's due, so you can check for excessive matching. (The rules are a little looser on this exercise than on most essays. If you're using good selection of source material to support your essay, you may start to run up toward 30% matching or so, excluding your references, which don't count - unless I have a reason to believe that you're actually simply copying somebody else's work. Even so, matching from any single source definitely shouldn't come close to 20%. If it does, the same general rule of no credit will apply here.)