Summary of task: The research essay is the most important task. The purpose
of the task is to showcase your research skills and your capacity to analyse
primary sources, which are the raw materials for the writing of history. Your
reading for this task must be wide and detailed and you are expected to draw on
recommended readings and find additional material through the Flinders library
catalogue. The goal of this task is to become acquainted with the ways historians
have written about your chosen theme and use your interpretative skills to draw
meaning – as much as possible – out of a particular source set. This will allow
you to ‘enter into conversation’ with the historians who have written about your
chosen theme and say something interesting about it. The final task will
demonstrate your ability to digest and synthesise ideas and large amounts of
information. It will also demonstrate your ability to organise ideas and evidence,
articulate an argument, and present it according to the norms of the history
discipline.
This task requires you to:
1. Select one question.
2. Begin reading general information about your general subject area. See
what the authors of general histories of 20th century Europe have to say
about your period/context. (So, if I am writing about women in the
Russian Revolution, I might skim read the chapters on the revolution in
Eric Hobsbawm’s The Age of Extremes and Konrad Jarausch’s Out of
Ashes.)
3. Examine the list of recommended secondary sources and decide which
recommendations are useful and what else is missing. Find out what else
is available in the Flinders Library catalogue.
4. Explore what kinds of primary source material is available in your subject
area and develop a strategy for using primary sources. You don’t have
time to look at everything so you might focus your attention on a
particular database or adapt your question to focus in on a particular
source or set of sources.
5. Take notes from your primary and secondary sources. Make sure you
always include page numbers and write out all the reference details so
that you can cite the source correctly in your footnotes.
6. Explore links between primary source evidence and ideas and arguments
presented in secondary sources. Consider what themes are emerging and
how you might organise your ideas around a set of points or examples.
You will need to decide how to narrow your focus in a way that is
manageable for a 2000 word essay.
7. Carefully plan the structure of your argument and be prepared to revise
this structure as your draft the essay.
8. Produce a response in essay format (i.e. double-spaced, 12 point font,
pages numbered, introductory, thesis statement, well organised
paragraphs, references in Chicago Style footnotes, bibliography in Chicago
style).
9. Cite all material drawn from primary and secondary sources and
demonstrate academic integrity.
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