The Task: Define a topic that fits within the broad subject of “politics,” research, and write a paper, roughly six-to-eight pages long (1400-2000 words), on the following general topic. You are required to consult at least three scholarly sources (secondary source books and articles: works of history written by people who have real knowledge of the topic) for your paper, including at least one article published in a peer-reviewed journal, in addition to whatever else you might use.
The Topic: An aspect of the history of politics in Europe, circa 1800-1914. For the purposes of this paper, we are defining politics as virtually anything that might fall under the scope of “political activity,” whether within government or outside government (“outside” might range from political theory and ideas to different forms of political agitation, political organizations of all kinds, whether underground or legal, or individuals who were engaged in political activities but not within the framework of government and associated political activities: any number of feminists, for instance, who demanded rights outside the framework of the recognized boundaries of the political sphere).
An important part of this assignment is defining a research topic that is suitable for a paper of this length. The main focus of your paper must also fall within the time period of our class: 1800-1914. (That rules out revolutionary Paris, if any of you were thinking about going there. However, it includes Napoleonic Paris). And while some topics might be transnational (for instance, women’s rights or socialism or nationalist movements in, say, Germany or Italy before unification), I am excluding diplomatic history unless your paper focuses on the domestic political dimension of a given international issue (for instance, imperialism and the British parliamentary elections of 1900).
In general, you should define a topic narrow enough that you can learn enough about it in a short amount of time to be able to explain the matter to your audience. Chances are, you will hit on something that none of your three possible readers (Preetham, Spencer, or me) know much about. Think of your job as explaining the matter to us and, while doing so, convincing us that your account is reliable – so, good enough that something will stick in my mind and I’ll throw it into a lecture next year.
What the task entails: I am asking you to do four basic tasks within the framework of this assignment.
First: selecting a topic. Defining a good topic for a research paper requires doing some initial research. Topics need to be narrow enough to be able to say something substantive in a short paper; but they need to be broad enough to be able to research. A topic is too broad if you are left summarizing, say, the “history” of 19th century Paris. A topic is too narrow if you can’t find anything about it in a readable language: say, the introduction of flush toilets in Silesia.
Second: conducting some research. This task is connected to the first task in so far as you need a topic that has easily accessible materials available. To repeat, you must refer to at least four scholarly sources (book or articles) for this paper.
Third: writing up your findings. If you have a clearly defined research topic, writing the paper will be a lot easier because you will know the question that you are trying to answer.
Four: use of proper citation methods, which for the purposes of this paper will be Chicago Style/Turabian. This paper requires that you use footnotes (any decent word processing program automatically formats them for you). I will be explaining in class why historians prefer footnotes, what you can learn from footnotes, and the different ways that you can use footnotes. It is not quite as boring as it sounds, or that is what some of the students in previous years’ classes told me.
>>>> An additional incentive: if you properly footnote, you can dispense with a bibliography because all the necessary information will be in the footnotes. What is more, it will get you to six pages more quickly.
Grading: paper grades will reflect those four tasks but in an indirect way. We will grade on the basis of three equally weighted categories: 1) general content (which will include both an assessment of the appropriateness of the topic and, more importantly, how well you addressed the topic, both with respect to research conducted as well as how that research was used in the paper); 2) presentation of the content (organization, argument, writing at the level of the paper as a whole); 3) writing mechanics and formatting (basically, adherence to basic grammatical standards and use of footnotes and bibliography).
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=rqe1UU6OiIUC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=French+movements+during+napoleon&ots=q8jd4HnSuj&sig=cXdXYrx5cZZwz_hJjF1tQbxYky8#v=onepage&q=French%20movements%20during%20napoleon&f=false
Here is one of the books my teacher said to reference if I wanted to do the subject of napoleon and his government
I’m not sure if my subject would be a good one to fullfill 6 pages worth but I would like to see if you guys have another subject that would fit into the assignment
