HISTORY OF COMMUNICATION CMST 3HC3. Assignment 3: Historiography

It will consist of an introduction (200 to 300 words) and a short essay (1000 to 1250 words) that critically analyzes three peer-reviewed secondary sources related to your research question.

HISTORY OF COMMUNICATION
CMST 3HC3
WINTER 2020
Assignment 3: Historiography
Description from the Syllabus
Assignment 3: Historiography (20% of final grade)
This is the third in a series of three linked assignments for this course. It will consist of an introduction (200 to 300 words) and a short essay (1000 to 1250 words) that critically analyzes three peer-reviewed secondary sources related to your research question. The introduction should explain the context and significance of the final version of your research question and offer a tentative answer to your question. The essay should compare, contrast, and connect the three sources you use; if still relevant, you may use the source that you used in assignment 2. It must include a full bibliographic citation for each source following the Chicago Manual of Style. We will cover the concept of historiography and the components of good historiographic writing in lecture and tutorial. For more information on this assignment, please see the guidelines on Avenue. Electronic submission due to Avenue Dropbox by noon on Friday, 20 March; a hard copy of the assignment with a printout of the rubric attached is due at the start of your tutorial during the week of 23 March.
Objectives
The aim of this assignment is for you to develop your critical thinking and research skills by a) synthesizing primary and secondary source evidence to explain your historical research question; and b) reading and thinking carefully to critically assess, compare, and contextualize secondary sources related to your research question. You will also develop your writing skills by writing an informative, well-organized introduction and a clearly presented and argued historiography.
Instructions
Part I: Background
In this section, you should reproduce your research question from Assignment 2, Part IV. Please also include full bibliographic citations (following the Chicago Manual of Style) for the three sources you examined for Assignment 2. 
Part II: Introduction 
The 200-300-word introduction should function as a proposal for an imagined research paper dealing with the two primary sources you analyzed in Assignment 2 and answering the historical research question you have been developing in Assignments 1 and 2. After reading your introduction, the reader should know what your subject is and why you think it is important. The introduction should include these elements:
1. Basic information about the primary sources that you analyzed and their historical context, laid out in no more than one long paragraph.
2. Your research question rising out of these sources and their historical context. (Whether you restate or revise the version of research question that you posed in Assignment 2, Part IV, is up to you. Your research question should be historical in nature, engage directly with the primary sources, and relate to the secondary sources that you discuss in your historiography.)
3. Your tentative answer to that question. The answer remains tentative (even though well-informed by your research) because this remains a proposal rather than a finished research paper. You may draw upon your primary source analysis, as well as your secondary sources, to support your tentative answer. If you directly reference your primary and/or secondary sources (or course readings), then you should use a proper Chicago Style footnote or endnote to indicate this. (These citations will not count toward your word count.)
4. An explanation of the significance of your proposed research (e.g., what insights will it offer? Why do you think it is important?).
Part III: Historiography
For this section, you will write a short essay (1000-1250 words) that critically assesses, compares, and connects three peer-reviewed secondary sources directly related to your historical research question. You will use the historiography skills that you explored in lecture and tutorial, as well as in the reading “How to Write a Historiography.”
1. Using the guidelines in the Finding Peer-Reviewed Secondary Sources document (on Avenue), select three peer-reviewed secondary sources that are directly related to your historical research question. They should deal directly with the historical period you are investigating. The choice of articles/book chapters is very important. You will do best if you use secondary sources that analyze the same or similar questions or that are connected through the analysis of similar sources. How can you do an effective comparison if your sources do not overlap? Do not choose more than one work by the same author. Each source must be a peer-reviewed journal article, a chapter that has appeared in a peer-reviewed edited collection, or a chapter in a peer-reviewed monograph. You MAY use the secondary source that you summarized for Assignment 2, as long as it still relates directly to your research question and meet the criteria in the Finding Peer-Reviewed Secondary Sources document.
2. Analyze each of your 3 selected secondary sources. Read through each source carefully, taking notes. Then, analyze the sources by answering the following questions. Although you will not have space to fully reproduce your answers to these questions in your essay, answering them before you start outlining your essay will help you identify what you might want to say about each source in order to set up your comparisons and connections.
a) What point is the scholar trying to make in each article?  What is the case study? What is the “big question”?
b) What is your assessment of the quality of the research and writing in each article? Is the article easy to understand and are the author’s arguments based on clear and abundant evidence? What kinds of evidence impress this scholar? What evidence is used to support the argument or arguments in the article? In your opinion, does the author really prove their argument or simply assert a conclusion? What kinds of assumptions does the author make about their topic? Are those assumptions warranted, or unreasonable? 
c) Look for the historiographical section within each article or chapter. Has your author placed their own analysis against that of other historians? This might be in the text, or it might be in the footnotes. Pay particular attention if the author of your first article explicitly compares his work to that of your second or third article. If you see this kind of overlap, does the author seem to treat the work of the other scholar fairly?
3. Write a well-organized, clearly argued historiographic essay. In order to effectively compare and connect your three sources, your essay should address the following questions:
a) What are the similarities and differences in the approaches the scholars take to the topic? Can you suggest factors that might have influenced the approaches the scholars take?
b) How do these works relate to what you understand other approaches to the topic have been? Can you think of other approaches to the question that the scholars do not take, given their evidence and arguments? (Note: you may reference course readings and lecture when you address these questions. Just be sure to cite them using a proper Chicago Style footnote or endnote.)
c) If the scholars use similar evidence and reach different conclusions, can you explain why? If the scholars use different evidence, does some of the evidence seem stronger or more appropriate?
d) Whose argument is most persuasive? Why?
Your essay should include an introductory paragraph that (briefly!) provides the context for your discussion (e.g., your research question and the historical context it addresses) and includes a thesis statement. Your thesis statement should articulate an argument that you will be persuading your reader to accept. 4. As in Assignment 2, you should do much more paraphrasing that direct quotation. Too much quotation will be an indicator that you have not adequately synthesized your sources in your analysis.
5. Following your essay, you should include a bibliography that lists all sources referenced in alphabetical order. Each of these BIBLIOGRAPHIC citations should follow the Chicago Manual of Style. 
Hints
1. Your introduction should be divided into 2 or possibly 3 paragraphs. Many students will probably devote the first paragraph to addressing element 1 and a second paragraph to elements 2-4.
2. The Griffith, Marchand, and Spigel readings all utilize advertisements as primary sources to help develop and answer historical research questions. These readings can serve as models for your work. Further, they offer valuable information about the kinds of evidence and insights that advertisements can provide.
3. Although you will need to give your reader enough of the “story” in your article so that they can follow your argument, you will not do well on this assignment is all you do is summarize each article or chapter. Figuring out how to convey the right amount of story (summary) concisely and with connection to your analysis is an important skill (and one you’ve practiced in assignment 2). 
4. Give yourself plenty of time to select, examine, and think about the secondary sources.
5. Writing an excellent historiographic essay takes time, especially given the word limit. Your writing process should include outlining your essay, a first draft, and plenty of time for revision and editing. 
6. Read your introduction and essay aloud to yourself. This is a good way to catch silly mistakes and infelicitous turns of phrase.
Evaluation: This assignment is worth 10% of the final course mark. Here is the breakdown for evaluation (out of 100%):
5% Assembly and formatting 
• Are name, student number, course number, tutorial section, and TA name in upper right hand corner? 
• Are all of the required elements included in the following order: part I (reproduction of research question, name of document group, full bibliographic citations for the two primary sources and secondary source from Assignment 2), part II (200-300-word introduction), and part III (1000-1250 word historiographic essay).
• Is the assignment formatted in double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font, left justified, 1-inch margins? Do the bibliographic entries use hanging indents?
• Is a printout of the rubric attached securely to the back of the hard copy submission? (Please take care of this before you come to class: staplers or paperclips will NOT be available in tutorials.) (NOTE: please do not submit a copy of the rubric electronically)
• Is the electronic submission in Word or PDF format? Has it been submitted without the rubric? 
15% Spelling, grammar, and quality of prose
• Do the part II introduction and part III historiographic essay use proper spelling and punctuation?
• Do the introduction and historiographic essay use proper grammar, including no run-on sentences or sentence fragments?
• Is the prose clear and easy to understand? Does it avoid wordiness, awkward phrases, and other barriers to comprehensibility?• Are the introduction and historiographic essay the correct length?
10% Citations
• Do citations of secondary sources within the introduction and historiographic essay follow Chicago Manual of Style guidelines for footnotes or endnotes?
• Are all uses of outside sources properly cited? When you quote directly, are your direct quotations placed within quotation marks? When you paraphrase, do you cite your sources? Improper citation is a form of plagiarism. (NOTE: If you plagiarize the work of others, you risk earning zero credit on this assignment or more serious consequences.)
• Do the citations for all sources follow Chicago Manual of Style guidelines for bibliographic citations?
• Is the Part III bibliography in alphabetical order? Does it include all works cited in the historiographic essay?10% Organization
• Is the Introduction broken into more than one paragraph? Does the paragraph break(s) make sense? Is the information in the introduction presented in a logical order?
• Does the Historiographic Essay have a clear thesis that asserts an argument? Does it have an introductory paragraph that contains the thesis and (briefly!) provides the context for your discussion? Do each of the body paragraphs explore a single major point in support of the thesis? Does each paragraph have a topic sentence? Does it have a concluding paragraph that sums up the main arguments of the essay?
• Is each paragraph at least three sentences long?
Content
20% Part I: Introduction
• Does the introduction provide basic information about the primary sources analyzed and their historical context?
• Does the research question relate directly to the primary sources? Is it historical? Is it clear, focused, appropriately complex?
• Does the tentative answer to the research question draw clear connections between the historical research question, the primary sources, and the secondary sources that are discussed in the historiography?
• Does the introduction explain the significance of your proposed research?
• If relevant, does the introduction reference appropriate secondary and primary sources?
40% Part II: Historiography
• Do the three secondary sources selected for analysis fulfill the criteria laid out in Section II? (Note: To receive credit, each secondary source must fulfill the criteria. There will be a significant reduction in credit for each source that fails to fulfill the criteria.)
• Do the three secondary sources analysed related directly to the historical research question described in the Introduction?
• Does the essay make a compelling argument that progresses logically from the introduction to the conclusion? Are assertions supported with evidence?
• Does the essay identify key similarities and differences between the approaches taken by each author? Does it suggest factors that contributed to these differences?• Does the essay situate the selected sources in relation to other approaches that have been or could be taken to the topic? 
• Does the essay discuss how the sources use different evidence—or how they use the same evidence differently? Does it take a stand on which evidence (or approach) is the strongest or most appropriate?
• Does the essay evaluate the relevant strengths and weaknesses of the selected sources, including taking a stand on which argument is most persuasive?
• As relevant, does the essay reference appropriate secondary sources?