| Revision report for week 12 | |
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BEFORE AND IN CLASS With the benefit of revision report #1, you should have embarked on your various smaller aims as well as your highest priorities for, over the next several weeks, revising your rough draft into final form. 1. Your introduction should have: general historical background/context, specific stakes for people in the past (what were they striving to add into the world?), your main analytical themes (e.g., masculinity, memory, law, war, social reform, et cetera), a sense of your primary sources, and your overarching analytical argument (thesis statement) which will hold together your entire paper as an original contribution to our historical understanding (i.e., not already covered by an historian). 2. Consider the secondary sources that you list in your bibliography to be allies who have worked on some aspect of history related to your topic — but not YOUR topic. You get to analyze history in some new way. 3. If you have not done so already, now is good time to break down your sources into secondary and primary. Secondary sources are by historians. Primary sources are by people in the past. Breaking down what you have will enable you to pinpoint how your primary sources enable you to analyze history in a new way. 4. Now is also a good time to revisit your outline for your paper. Make sure that each paragraph has one main analytical point which refers to and fits into your overarching analytical argument (i.e., your thesis). As you revisit your paragraphs, take note of the topic sentence, which should convey the main analytical point of the paragraph, and how it fits into your overarching argument. Topic sentences are a great guide for your reader — and they are a great guide for you in revising your paper, piece by piece. 5. Beyond your main priorities for your paper, there are also the details. Make sure you do not assume knowledge in your reader. Make sure you anchor each paragraph in a chronology and geography: time and place. Make sure you identify who people were, what institutions were, what events were, et cetera.
6. Whenever you attribute motivations or evaluations, or any subjectivity or ideology, to your historical actors, you must provide evidence of that motivation or evaluation from the primary sources.
7. Finally, your updated workplan for weeks 13 through 17, when the final paper is due. |