Q Instructions Note that if you are interested in a more interactive approach to history, you can consider the Game Option for the Research Paper, where you obtain, install, and play a historic game set during the course period. Then you submit an After Action Report for the assignment: an AAR on the Tutorial scenario in place of the Proposal, and a longer AAR on a scenario of your choosing in place of the final Research Paper. There is a section in the Content area of the course, which provides game manuals, report format guides, and sample AARs. Feel free to examine this material. Please ask if you have any questions about this option, and let the instructor know if you wish to pursue it. During this course, students will be required to complete a research paper. This paper is to be written according to academic standards regarding spelling, grammar, and construction, and the citations and references must be done according to the Chicago/Turabian style manual listed in the course syllabus, and available through the school’s online library. Unless you have considerable experience writing academic history, do not assume you know the proper style for references and citations – consult the style manual and make sure you do. This paper will be double-spaced, with standard margins of 1 inch top and bottom, and 1 ¼ inches on the sides (the standard settings in Word if you create a new blank document), and 12 point text font size, in Times New Roman, Arial, Calibri, or Verdana type font, and of course, proper spelling and grammar. The occasional spelling error will not be penalized – it happens to everyone, including professional authors – but if the abuse of the language rises to the level of criminal activity, it will result in a penalty to the paper’s grade, depending on the severity of the abuse. The main text of the paper must be a minimum of fifteen (15) pages in length. The various supplemental pages – title page, bibliography, endnotes, etc., do NOT count as part of this requirement. Please number your pages as well – use Word’s automatic Insert – Page Number function. You may place the page numbers wherever you feel most comfortable with them. A separate title page must be included, which in addition to the paper title should list the student’s information – name, course, instructor, date, etc. The paper must include a bibliography as well as reference notes for any quotes or specific information. You may use either endnotes or footnotes. Both the bibliography and any endnotes should each begin on a separate page of the paper. Endnotes should come before the bibliography. Do NOT rely on Enter / line spacing to accomplish this, as that can become altered across different platforms. Instead, use the “Insert – Break – Page Break” menu command at the end of the main text to make sure the next page starts at the top of a new page. Use Word’s “Insert – Reference / Footnote” function to create the notes, which is much easier and simpler than trying to do it yourself. In the Resources section of the class site there is a folder titled “Research and Writing Tools” with a PDF of the US Army’s Center For Military History’s Manual for Writing Military History. This is a very useful guide, and follows the required Chicago Style. Feel free to download a copy of this guide and consult it when working on the paper. The Center has made this style manual freely available to the public. It is expected that students will work with secondary published sources when doing the papers, but if a student has access to and wishes to use any sort of archival material or other primary records, by all means use those as well. Course textbooks are acceptable sources as well. Note that encyclopedia articles, whether in books or online, are NOT an accepted source for graduate school research papers such as this one. There are also good sources of material available on the web – the AMU library has an extensive selection of journals and articles, and the librarians are very helpful in pointing students in the right direction. There are also numerous official websites from archives and museums that can be very helpful. Some of these are listed in the course syllabus. One note on online sources – be very careful about using material from the web. There is a good deal of excellent and accurate material on the web, on a great variety of subjects. Unfortunately, there is usually an even greater quantity of absolute junk on the web as well. Unlike historical books, websites, especially personal ones, rarely contain lists of sources or reference notes, which can make it extremely difficult to gauge the accuracy of the material, unless you already have a strong working knowledge of the subject. So when using websites for your research, do your best to verify the information used from an independent source. And this doesn’t mean another website, since they often simply copy information from one to another. Look for something official – government or university sites, academic journals, etc. Another good way to find scholarly academic web sources is to use Google Scholar as a search engine. The Research and Writing Tools folder in the Resources section also has some good material for helping you evaluate web sources, or find good scholarly ones. Be sure to take a look. And remember the Annotated Bibliography in the Resources section as well - you should be able to find some useful material in there. Of special concern is Wikipedia, the open source reference web site. While Wiki often does contain excellent short summaries of a truly amazing number of topics, its very nature makes it inherently unreliable. By allowing anyone who accesses the site to alter the material posted to it, the site is open to serious abuse. The original goal for the site, allowing the continuous updating of the information posted on it, was an admirable one. But by granting that privilege to anyone who accesses the site, it becomes open to pranksters, as well as people with an agenda that doesn’t include “just the facts, ma’am”. For the purposes of these papers, you may use Wikipedia as a means to point you to other sources, but Wikipedia is NOT an allowable source for these papers. The paper must be on a subject that fits within the overall topic and time period of the American Revolutionary War. This covers the period between the end of the Seven Years War / French and Indian War in 1763 and Thomas Jefferson’s assumption of the presidency in 1801, inclusive. The subject of the paper could be a biographical study of significant individual, social, cultural, or political studies, an examination of a battle, technical studies of a weapon, a study of economics or alliances, or almost anything else that you can make a solid case for. One important thing to remember, which applies to all graduate history work, is that the paper topic should have an analytical aspect to it – evaluate, compare, investigate, etc. It is not enough to simply recount the facts of the Battle of Bunker Hill, you should also explore some analytical aspect of it. Was the colonial choice to provoke a British attack wise? Did the British have alternatives to the direct assault they used? How did the battle affect both the American and British forces throughout the rest of the war? Ask questions in your thesis and then attempt to answer them in the paper. Students will be required to submit a proposal, with their chosen topic, a basic thesis and supporting arguments, and a preliminary list of sources they intend to use – to be uploaded by the end of Week 3 of the course. Complete instructions for the paper proposal can be found in the Research Paper Proposal section that follows this material. Any direct quote or specific information such as statistics (this also includes illustrations, images, and maps) in your paper MUST be cited, using foot or endnotes. Also, if you are using a major argument or point from another source, even if you have put it into your own words, you must give credit to the original author in a citation. These notes MUST be in the Chicago / Turabian style. This style manual can be referenced in the online library, in the style manual section, under Chicago / Turabian or History writing. History writing does NOT allow the use of in-text, parenthetical citations – you will be penalized 10% of the total paper grade if you do so. Also, a minor but important note – do not use Roman numerals (I, II, III) for your citation (or page) numbers. Use the more common Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3) instead. Please make sure your software isn’t using the Roman numerals as a default setting – some versions of Word seem to do this for endnotes, for some reason I’ve never been able to figure out. If your software is using Roman numerals, change the setting to the Arabic numbers. Roman numerals get very long as they get bigger, take up a lot of space, and can be hard to decipher as they get larger – compare LXXXVII to 87! I am willing to look at and evaluate draft copies of the papers, but these would need to be submitted to me with sufficient time to read and comment on the work, and then return it to the student. Please do not submit a draft copy to me two days before the paper is due, and then complain that you didn’t have enough time to finish it. If you are uncertain about how much time you should allow for such an evaluation, ask. One further note – this is formal academic writing, and so should be in formal style. Please use third person past tense when writing history research papers, and be careful about bouncing back and forth between past and present tense – it is very easy to do without realizing it. History written in the present tense sounds very odd. Also, do not use slang, colloquialisms or contractions in your writing – this is unprofessional and hard to read. If you have questions regarding this, please consult the style manual or ask me. Papers are due, in accordance with school policy; at the end of the week listed as the due date in the course syllabus and in the assignment section – in this case the final week of the term. It is strongly recommended that, if possible, papers be submitted early. Grading papers is the single biggest part of my grading activities for any course, and it really helps to be able to grade them in small batches, spread apart, rather than trying to do a large number of them in a day or two after the term ends. Papers will be graded and returned to the students as quickly as my schedule allows, with commentary in the margins. Papers will be penalized for failing to adhere to the standards listed above. Papers with improper title pages, bibliographies, or sources will be penalized 10% of the total possible grade. Incorrect or missing citations will be penalized 10%. If the paper is short of the required minimum length it will be penalized 5% per missing page. As can be seen from this, it is possible for a paper with excellent content to be penalized down to an F level if you ignore the required style and format guidelines. These guidelines are not difficult, nor are they intended to frighten students – rather, their purpose is to produce a uniform appearance and structure, which makes grading them much, much easier. Papers will be read and assigned a grade based on their content, organization, research, and writing. After this grade is assigned, any penalties for the above will be assessed. There is a sample proposal at the end of the instructions for the Proposal, below, and there are some sample research papers in the Resources section of the class site for you to get an idea of what I am looking for. If you have any further questions regarding the overall nature of the research papers, do not hesitate to ask. I will be happy to clarify issues and point you in the direction of source material if desired.