Women and gender in Latin America in the 21st century History Essay

Final Paper Assignment: ARCHIVING THE PRESENT

Women and Gender in Latin America in the 21^st Century 

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Prompt & Purpose: Historical documents represent the primary source material for historians.  The collection and analysis of primary sources is central to historical research. The goal of this assignment is to consider what kinds of contemporary sources (created between 2000-2020) might historians in the future want to consult to be able to better understand the gender politics of our present moment &/or the experiences of women and men in 21^st century Latin America.

Task: For this final assignment, you must identify four contemporary primary sources related to women and gender in Latin America in the 21st century.  For the purpose of assembling our “Archive of the Present”, materials should document history, society, culture, and politics of Latin America, with an emphasis on women, gender (identity, roles, relations), women’s rights, social justice, human rights, &/or under-documented communities.

Your final assignment will take the form of a primary source anthology modeled after the entries in The Chile Reader and The Cuba Reader (see Week 2 primary sources).  For each document, you will elaborate a 1-2 paragraph introduction modeled after those preceding each individual entry. Relying on class readings and, if needed, on additional secondary sources, the intro will provide context and explanation for a selected passage from your source that explicitly, clearly and unarguably conveys the source’s significance for understanding the contemporary experiences of women &/or gender in Latin America.

Your entry should have an opening paragraph that covers the who, what, when, where, providing details about the author and origin of the source, and the historical context in which the source was produced. The second paragraph will expand on the scope and content of your chosen passage / image. Some questions to consider include:

A)     What does the source say, or show? (e.g. what are the song lyrics about? What happens during this episode of a show?)

B)     What was the author’s purpose in writing the text?

C)     Does the author have an argument or claim that s/he is trying to demonstrate?

D)     What evidence or details does the author provide?

E)     What meaning can you draw from the source? (nb: you do not need to answer all these questions)

A third paragraph should explicitly make the case for why your source should be included in an archive of the present moment. To identify the so what, why doe this source matter, ask yourself :

A)     What can be learned from this piece of evidence? Why does it matter?

B)     What can we learn from the point of view of the source?

C)     What does it reveal about the time/place?

D)     What does it tell us about women in contemporary America? Or about gender relations that will be historically interesting and significant?

Following the intro, you must either transcribe or insert a screenshot of your selected passage. Your work will be assessed on the appropriateness and originality of your selection as well as on the thoroughness and accuracy of your contextualization.

What is a “primary document”?

A primary source or document is any record, written or otherwise, produced in a specific time period under study.  Government reports, speeches,  NGO reports, activist campaigns, personal diaries, social media, material objects, music recordings, oral history interviews, poster art, paintings, a film, street graffiti, video footage, a poem: all these constitute primary documents inasmuch as they serve to illuminate the historical context in which they came into existence. Materials may be in a variety of formats, including print, audio and video materials, photographs, ephemera and digital files. You may not use any reading/film that was previously assigned for class.

A “secondary” source, in turn, is any published scholarly document that processes, interprets and analyzes a given historical topic, time period, character, etc. Books written by historians, sociologists, political scientists and other scholars about the past are all secondary sources, as they offer a secondary filter, besides firsthand experience or contemporaneousness, through which to make sense of historical objects and records.

Extra credit: Work accompanied by a 1 to 2-page “methodology” appendix detailing your research process (databases, key words used, false starts or other document “finds,” problems encountered in searches and solutions you came up with) will be eligible for a 1-2 point bonus, provided it offers a clear explanation and follows writing conventions.

Alternative Option: Processing our present, leaving a record for the future.

In place of 1 of the 4 sources about Latin America, you may write your own archival reflection for the California Historical Society (CHS) sponsored project. You are encouraged, but not required to submit it to their website (see below). If you select this option you must answer the four questions below in your final paper.

“Tell Your Story – California during the time of COVID-19”

“We are living through an extraordinary moment, a crisis of historic proportions. As the official historical society of the State of California, we at CHS invite you to help us document this time.

Modern historians have argued that history isn’t simply comprised of actions of remarkable or grand figures. The thoughts and experiences of everyday people are valuable keys to unlock what it’s like to live in any era. Since its inception in 1871, the archives of the California Historical Society have attested to the power of ordinary people’s testimonies through diaries, letters, scrapbooks, and oral histories.

We are creating a collection to document life in California during the current COVID-19 pandemic. We want your stories, from the far north of the state, to the Bay Area, to the Central Valley and coastal communities, to desert areas, Southern California, and the border region. Stories can connect us, and they can help us see ourselves. They can shape future understanding and reveal aspects of our present world. Preserving your stories can reinforce that, together, we are the people making history.

Top of Form

Full Name (required)
Town or City (required)
Your Age
Email Address (required)

 

1. 1.       How has the COVID-19 pandemic specifically affected you, your family or your community?

1. 2.       Have you experienced a significant life event since this began? A birthday, anniversary, birth, death, graduation, wedding, etc.? Tell us about how being in quarantine affected your experience?

1. 3.       How do you think life will or will not be the same after we emerge from sheltering in place?

1. 4.       Is there anything you'd like to add about your experience with the COVID-19 pandemic?
   
    

Share an image (of you, your family, your community, something you saw on a walk, something you created while sheltering in place, etc.).

Please provide a caption for your image. It’s helpful if you include names of individuals, where the image was taken, as well as any additional context. (ex: John and Jane Doe in their back yard, Fresno, California, April 4, 2020)

By submitting my story and its associated elements (the “Story”) to California Historical Society (“CHS”), I acknowledge and agree that CHS may, in its sole discretion, use the Story as part of a collection of stories (the “Collection”). I hereby grant to CHS a non-exclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, sublicensable, and royalty-free license to use, reproduce, publish, publicly perform, broadcast, publicly display, excerpt, abridge from, and distribute, in whole or in part, the Story, including my name in association with the Story, in any manner or form, and in any and all media now known or hereafter developed, in connection with or furtherance of the Collection. I waive all common law and statutory rights of publicity and privacy, moral rights, and any other rights that I may have with respect to the Story. I also acknowledge and agree that I shall have no ownership rights in the Collection and that I will receive no compensation for the use of my Story. I represent and warrant that my Story, to the best of my knowledge, does not and will not infringe the rights of any third party.

Yes, I agree.

I agree that my submission may be shared in whole or in part on Facebook and Instagram and online on the CHS website.

Yes, I agree.

https://californiahistoricalsociety.org/initiatives/tell-your-story-california-during-the-time-of-covid-19/

Bottom of Form

Background, Proof, and Details: Writing/Interpreting

Make the best of your sources—read them closely and carefully but with an eye to their relation to a wider context. Identify and take note of useful pieces of information that you may have missed upon initial reading or that may be newly important due to their relevance to any overarching topic you may have in mind. Aim to provide your reader with a detailed narrative that takes nothing for granted. The questions of who? what? when? where? how? why? should shadow every statement you make. When you re-read and edit your work, make sure to “fact-check” so that every sentence you put on paper has adequate backing from a perspective other than your own. In addition, make sure to write about the “thing itself,” not about “how we should understand this or that.” For example, the point of a good sentence is not to add referential fluff, as in:

“In his article on the end of the slave trade, historian Jeffrey Needell explains that slave contraband continued after 1831.”

Rather, a sentence should address the matter at hand directly. The real sentence in the example above is:

      “Slave contraband continued after 1831.”

Moreover, as if telling a story, you must keep working on that sentence to make it as powerful and useful as possible. As it stands, the sentence remains overly curt—great for making an incisive comment or for surprising or inducing a measure of shock onto your reader; not so great for moving your prose forward. Strategically chosen details and words can optimize the sentence so it can attain a greater effect:

“A slave contraband continued unabated despite the 1831 law ostensibly banning it. In fact, illegal slave traders imported x enslaved men and women mostly from Angola into Rio de Janeiro between then and 1850, which represented a n% rise in slave arrivals from the previous decade.”

So What?

Another essential question is: so what? You might be interested in a given topic or social question, but that does not make it automatically significant to other scholars or the public at large. Ask yourself why each insight matters. How might that insight reflect a specific understanding or perhaps even challenge presumed knowledge on the subject? What new narrative comes forth? Work this question into your prose in order to articulate the significance of your work.

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Formatting

1. Since you will work with 4 sources, your essay must be at the very least 4-pages in length, including the excerpts you select from your sources. Each of your introductory notes should be approximately 500-750 words.

1. Do not include a heading (no date, professor name, etc.). Only your name and the assignment’s title (single-spaced) in the HEADER, so that this information appears on every page.

1. Insert page numbers.

1. This time around, to save space, single-space your paragraphs, and standardize them to Times New Roman, 12-pt font.

1. Indent all paragraphs. Leave one 12-pt space between paragraphs.

1. Include single-spaced footnotes on 10pt font, formatted based on Chicago Manual of Style guidelines: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html.

1. In your explanation, avoid too many direct quotes and use only when absolutely necessary. It’s better to paraphrase in your own words and make citations in the form of footnotes to acknowledge other scholars’ work.

1. A final bibliography is not required, since you will be using full citations in your footnotes.

1. Edit thoroughly and repeatedly for grammar, syntax, sentence-agreement, and spelling mistakes. Maximize your writing by seeking the best word choices both in terms of concrete subjects and vivid, dynamic verbs. As a rule of thumb, a majority of your sentences should answer the question “who kicks whom/what?” The less “to be” verbs you use, the more your prose will rise. Remember your writing will be part of the grade. The Student Academic Success Center offers writing assistance by appointment: http://success.ucdavis.edu/services/writing.html.

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Deadline

Submit your work via Canvas by 5:00 PM on Friday, June 5. No late submissions will be accepted.

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Resources

For self-guided help, see Helen Sword, The Writer’s Diet: A Guide to Fit Prose (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016), or lessons 3-5 and 9 of Joseph W. Williams, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace (multiple editions). In terms of defining a research question, argument or “through lines,” see Kate L. Turabian, Student's Guide to Writing College Papers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), esp. chap. 2, “Finding a Research Question.”

Sample Entry I

Regional Unrest Before the Regency

            Reverend Robert Walsh, an Irish priest, visited Brazil as the official chaplain of a British diplomatic mission led by Viscount Strangford in 1828.[1] The mission aimed to accelerate the marriage between princess Maria de Bragança and her uncle dom Miguel, an arranged union meant to forestall conflict over the question of Portuguese succession after the death of João VI in 1826.[2] Walsh had studied medicine and had already traveled across the Levant in the early 1820s, which made him a great choice for the month-long voyage across the Atlantic. Yet, regardless of previous experiences, his sojourn in Brazil marked him most decisively: having witnessed slave-trading ships and the treatment of enslaved women and men in the Brazilian Empire, upon his return to the British Isles he joined the Society for the Abolition of Slavery, as told in a journal from his native Dublin.[3]

            Walsh’s account of his time in Brazil throws light upon the usual areas of travelers’ interests at the time. Specific chapters touched on mining and zoology, local customs, Sunday markets and soirées, and journeys into interior provinces. But Notices of Brazil also proved uniquely prescient. While scholars of Brazil have long described the Regency following Pedro I’s abdication in 1831 as beset by widespread revolts, Walsh demonstrates that regional unrest in fact preceded the Emperor’s abandonment of Brazil. Indeed, Pernambucans had a long tradition of resisting the centralizing tendencies of both the Joanine government and the post-1822 imperial state. Important revolts in 1817 and 1824 had already challenged Rio de Janeiro’s predominance, with the latter declaring Pernambuco an autonomous republic christened as the Confederacy of the Equator.[4] Walsh describes a series of factors leading to seething discontent and to an attempted uprising in 1829. Heavy taxation resulting from the ongoing Cisplatina War and Brazilian government aid to the Portuguese Civil War fed not only regional distaste towards the Court but a general sympathy for republican ideals. Dearth of circulating currency compounded a growing resentment. Troops failed to receive their pay when the copper coin put in circulation by imperial authorities began to fall short. In this scenario, a group of insurgents stormed São Antonio, a district of Recife, and declared a republic. Reportedly, a similar uprising took place in the province of Maranhão. Responding quickly, local authorities successfully disbanded the attempted takeover. Notwithstanding the ephemeral nature of this uprising, these local republican rebels had unwittingly ignited the first of multiple uprisings that would continue to rock the northeast into the following decade.

Robert Walsh, Notices of Brazil in 1828 and 1829, vol. 2 (Boston: Richardson, Lord & Holbrook, 1831), 222-223.

Sample Entry II

Popular, Multi-Ethnic Uprisings and the Challenges of “Order”

      News spread fast during the Regency, though not as fast as regional revolts. As shown by the November 1835 reports from local justices of peace in Abaite [Abaetetuba] and Cametá to the provincial president of Pará published by the Diário do Pernambuco in early 1836, the uprising that began in Belém quickly spread downstream to nearby villages. Known as cabanos in reference to the huts that indigenous people constructed, by late-1835 the rebels comprised a diverse cross-section of Pará’s society. While the initial outbreak of the Cabanagem revolt had featured a loose coalition led by free workers, increasingly African slaves and indigenous men joined the ranks against government forces and Portuguese merchants. As evinced by the fact that the Recife-based newspaper published these local reports in full, news of the Cabanagem awakened alarm in neighboring Brazilian provinces, probably due to imperial officials’ fears over potential spill-over effects into their own districts. Such reports also wield valuable information about an uprising that remains relatively obscure regarding the rebels themselves before their ultimate defeat in 1840. In between the lines, the justices of peace provide clues about the rebels’ strategies and potential make-up. Most the fighting reported by these officials unfolded along the riverbank, as rebels came in and out of the brush in what could be described as guerrilla warfare. Estimated at about 300, the cabanos seemed quite comfortable with the terrain, which suggests that they had experience moving about and within the heavily forested area and that they were in all likelihood indigenous. While tenuous, such evidence at least points out that within a year of the Cabanagem’s start in Jan. 1835, the rebellion had uncontrollably spread not only well beyond Belém but also well beyond the groups initially involved in rebel Francisco Vinagre’s circle.[5]

Diário de Pernambuco nº 27 (4 Feb. 1836).

Final Paper Checklist

HIS 159- Women and Gender in Latin America

þ Does the assignment title clearly reflect the main argument and leading themes of my project?

þ   Did I include my name and title (single-spaced) as part of the header?

þ   Did I indent every paragraph?

þ   Did I number all pages?

þ   Does my paper use footnotes to refer to authors, texts or ideas? Are the footnotes well formatted? (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html)

þ   Do I systematically avoid the passive voice when writing? (passive voice=when the subject of the sentence receives the action; for ex. “Crucial labor laws were passed during Vargas government.” An active voice makes the subject carry out the action rather than receive it: “The Vargas government passed crucial laws.”

þ   Do I use dynamic, adequate, and specific action verbs instead of more generic,           inexpressive ones (be, have, be, do, become, make, take, give, show, say, tell, etc.)? (Merriam-Webster’s Thesaurus helps: https://www.merriam-webster.com/).

þ   Do I replace vague or abstract nouns, and impersonal subjects (“There was,” “It is”) with concrete and specific ones?

þ Does my prose avoid clunky sentence constructions and run-on sentences? Of course,           I edited this paper at least three times before submitting and revised and rewrote any sentences that needed improvement.

þ Did I revise for subject-verb AND noun-pronoun agreement errors? (a common one is referring to a country as a “they” as in “After 1842, Brazil actively rebuffed Great Britain because they hoped to secure a better commercial treaty with another country.” Noun-pronoun agreement is totally off in this sentence.

þ Did I vigilantly revise and edit in order to correct any typos, misspellings, grammar mistakes, misquotations and any other unseemly elements that could hinder my essay’s purpose?