As the United States became a global power by the early
1900s, international and domestic forces pressed upon American society to begin
attempting to redefine exactly who an American was. The 14th Amendment to the
Constitution during the Reconstruction Era had defined citizenship in national
terms and presumably applied to all those living in newly acquired territories
around the globe. Coupled with the massive waves of European immigration, the
nation grappled with incorporating so many people of incredibly diverse
backgrounds and extending the associated rights and privileges that came with
American citizenship. These two documents express the evolution of concerns
that were generated through perceived threats (both real and imagined) to
American society and culture and propose solutions to the critical
question of who and what an American was in the early 20th century.
Answer the following two
questions in an essay with a MINIMUM length of TWO (2) FULL PAGES:
1. What are the
major arguments contained within each of these documents? How do they compare
to one another?
2. Are there parallels
in their arguments to modern debates within American society? If so, in what
specific way(s)?
Please remember to use
specific evidence from these documents to support your arguments.
Writing and Formatting/Citation Requirements
Writing Instructions and
Formatting/Citation Requirements
For the Primary Document Analysis (PDA) papers
this semester, you will select a single document or specified group of
documents from the documents provided within each Unit’s PDA Assignment page.
After reading your selected document please submit a written essay
that:
1. Addresses the stated
writing prompt(s) associated with the specific PDA assignment and selected
documents.
2. Exceeds the stated
MINIMUM length requirement for the associated writing prompt(s).
The Writing Assignments for this course
should be written and submitted with the following formatting rules:
1. The essays should be Double-Spaced and
written in Times New Roman font with a point size of 12.
2. The top, bottom, left, and right margins
should all be the standard 1″ in size.
3. The single-spaced header on the
first page should include your Name and Document # from which your
analysis is drawn. There is no need for a header on any subsequent page. There
is also no need for a Title. Please be aware that if you should decide to
include in your submission a Title that this will not be counted towards
your minimum length requirement.
4. You will be penalized for any
submission that does not meet the stated minimum length requirement.
5. Because of the short length of these
assignments, please avoid directly quoting the document unless it is absolutely
essential to your argument. Instead, briefly paraphrase the passage(s) and
focus instead upon providing your analysis and supporting your
argumentation.
6. There is no need to provide a citation for
the single document you are analyzing. However, if you have used outside
sources beyond the document provided, please include citations using the MLA
Format. This will include in-text citations and a Works Cited Page. The
Works Cited Page should be on a separate page at the conclusion of your essay
and will not count towards the minimum length requirement.
If you need any help with the above formatting
guidelines or citing your sources, please do not hesitate to email me. A very
good online resource for any college-level writing assignment is the Purdue
Online Writing Lab (OWL).The following URL will lead you directly to their
pages related to MLA citations: Click Here
Finally, there should be no excuses for
attempting to use the ideas and/or words of any of your sources and attempting
to pass them off as your own. Plagiarism will not be tolerated under any
circumstances. Simply citing your source(s) does not give you permission to
copy them word-for-word unless they are being directly quoted and placed in
quotation marks. Even attempting to adjust the sentence structure or altering a
couple of words in a source will not absolve you of charges of plagiarism. The
skill of paraphrasing (or putting a source’s words or ideas into your own
words) is not a simple one to acquire. The Purdue OWL provides some helpful
hints and exercises to work on this: Click Here
The trick with paraphrasing is avoiding the
words and phrases of your source(s) as much as possible. The best technique I
have learned is to read your source and then either close the book or minimize
the website. Think about what you read and how it makes sense to you and the
argument(s) you are trying to make. Next, without the help of the open book or
visible website, write the information down in your paper. It will probably not
sound as good or be as polished as the original source, but hopefully it will
actually be your own thoughts about the chosen topic. The purpose of these Unit
Essays is for you to think deeper about a topic of your choosing and provide me
with your own thoughts on the matter. Outside research is certainly acceptable.
However, I am interested in what YOU think and not what others have said about
the questions/issues being addressed.
Once again, please email me with any questions
that you may have and I look forward to reading your original words and ideas
this semester.
A note about Minimum Length Requirements
A note about
Minimum Length Requirements
Please be aware that the associated page
length requirement stated in the writing prompt for these PDA
Assignments is merely a MINIMUM one and the expectation is that you will do
more work in this course than simply the bare minimum. The historical subjects
and events covered by these documents should provide you with enough material to
never have to be concerned with having too little to write about.
In my history courses, there is never such a thing as a maximum
length limit. Consequently, please
refer to the grading rubric for this assignment to understand the point
penalties for not clearly exceeding the minimum length requirement.
