PSA Format: Answering the 4 Critical Analysis Questions
Primary Source Evidence: This assignments needs to focus on a “Artifact, Letter, Photograph, Cartoon, Picture,Poem”, an ACTUAL piece of evidence WITHIN one of these “Primary Sources. (Primary Soures to choose from are attached in file!!!
The PSA is not a formal essay assignment, though you may respond in the form of a short essay. The purpose of the PSA is to guide you through the process of critically analyzing an historical document. To do so, the PSA is organized around four questions. If you are more comfortable answering the following questions directly rather than in essay form that is perfectly acceptable. Points will not be deducted if you do not compose an answer in traditional essay form.
The PSA you submit is required to address each of these four questions: (1) What primary source will you analyze? (2) How can you describe this primary source? (3) What can you conclude after reading this primary source? (4) Do other primary sources support or challenge your conclusion? The point-value for answering each question is noted below. Points will be deducted if your PSA fails to address any of the required questions. For further instructions on how to answer these 4 questions, refer to the explanations below:
QUESTIONS:
Question 1 (5 points, out of 100)
What primary source will you analyze?
This may seem easy like an easy 5 points, but if you do not choose a primary source to analyze you will not receive credit for this assignment. Choosing a primary source is the first step in this analytical assignment. To repeat, if you do not focus on a primary source your assignment will not receive credit.
Question 2 (20 points, out of 100)
How can you describe this primary source?
In this paragraph it’s your responsibility to describe the primary source evidence you’ve decided to focus on. There are several key elements I’d like you to describe. What type of primary source is it? (Is it a diary, a letter, a memoir, a political speech, census data, or another type of document or artifact from the past?) Who is the author, what is their perspective? What tone distinguishes this source? (Consider what adjective best describes the tone of the source, such as outraged, joyous, matter of fact, or sarcastic.) Finally, what was the probable purpose of the source? (Probable, because it’s rare for a source to announce its original purpose; here, you will need to speculate, deduce, and infer.)
In this step it is important to consider the relative merits and/or biases of the source you’ve read. It is also important to consider the context in which a source was produced, and what purpose it was meant to have. It is not your job here to gauge whether a source is “good,” “bad,” or “biased”; all primary sources are each of these things—good, bad, and biased. The challenge here is to understand the perspective of the source so you can begin to consider what you can conclude after reading it (the goal of the next step of the assignment). If you don’t know the answer to any one of these questions, simply note that you don’t have that information. We historians very often don’t know the full story of a source. That’s just part of the challenge of piecing together a picture of the past from fragmentary evidence.
Question 3 (50 points, out of 100)
What can you conclude after reading this source? Describe in no less than one double-spaced page an argument you can make based on the source(s).
An argument can be described as the conclusion you come to after reading the primary source you’ve chosen. This is the historian’s most important job: coming to an understanding about the past by engaging with evidence from the past.
One way to consider completing this part of the assignment is to think about how you’d answer this question: What does this primary source evidence lead you to conclude about this period in the past.
EXAMPLE:
Here is an example. After reading the following primary source (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/columbus2.html), a ca. 1494 letter from Christopher Columbus to the Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, I argue that economic motivations mainly spurred European exploration and colonization of the Americas. This is evident in Columbus’s attention to the material resources available in the islands of the West Indies he had explored. That Columbus repeatedly refers to the acquisition, distribution, and protection of gold is significant. Clearly, Europeans, like Columbus, were motivated by economic concerns above all other factors.
After reading the Columbus letter, I came to the conclusion that European exploration was mainly inspired by economic motivations. You might not agree with my argument—especially given Columbus’s references in the letter to religious factors—but that’s okay. An argument is inherently subjective and it’s appropriate to debate. In this part of the assignment it is up to you, after choosing and describing a primary source, to also choose what conclusion you can come to.
Last Completed Projects
| topic title | academic level | Writer | delivered |
|---|