Postwar Japan

Students in this course will write a ten to fifteen page paper describing and assessing events, episodes, developments, or personalities in recent East Asian history.

These topics are not to be simply recounted (told), but instead assessed—were they truly significant, did they have a positive or negative effect on East Asian history (and why), etc. Remember when writing an essay or paper to use the following format: 1) Introduction—in which you state your argument or thesis, 2) main body, in which you support your argument with evidence, and also further develop it 3) Conclusion, in which you restate (and rephrase) your argument on the basis of your evidence A certain length isn’t of paramount importance—you can make your case concisely or go into a fair amount of detail, as long as you make a good argument and do a good job of supporting it. In other words, the length mentioned above isn’t an absolute requirement, but instead a target you should aim for; shorter papers would likely omit necessary details, while at the same time ‘padding’ papers to get them to a certain length is definitely to be avoided.

When writing history, past tense should be used. Also, since we’re not writing intricate diplomatic histories, where subtleties and nuance have to be employed, using an active voice rather than a passive one would be best. Use clear, direct language, especially when stating your thesis.

As for the material you base your paper on–stick to written sources, whether primary or secondary—there’s a lot of information on the internet, but a lot of it is suspect, so your best bet is probably using the Web to point to the written sources you’ll need. Be sure to cite your sources, using endnotes and a bibliography; I’d like to see the Chicago Manual of Style guidelines followed, since they are the standard for history papers, but the APA format is fine.

Your paper topic is due about a month before the actual paper itself. Turning in either early is perfectly acceptable and especially valuable in the case of the paper topic, since it will increase the amount of time I can devote to giving you feedback and suggestions.

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