HIST 301: Methods & Writing (Sepinwall)

You have 4 projects to research and prepare for:

• Library Resource Exploration (Furay, Chapter 6)
• Prospectus--a summary paper of whose papers you will be working with and your hypothesis.
• First Paper--A description and evaluation of the papers you have selected
• Second Paper--Placing the correspondence in a larger historical context with reference to at least:
  • 4 secondary sources
  • 1 primary source (in addition to the correspondence)

Each section below addresses the needs for that assignment. Each section builds on the prior work, so it is advised to work as the sections are presented, but you can always jump back and review as needed!

The purpose of Chapter 6 in Furay is to familiarize you with specific types of research tools needed for historical research. You have likely used some of these before, but probably not all. Here are hints on how to start in both Set A and B, Exercises 1 and 2.

Exercise 1--use keywords from the question to search the library catalog. When you see a likely-sounding title, click to open the record and look at the subject headings as shown in the screen shot in the Catalog tab.

Exercise 2--This gets tricky as most electronic sources will not contain materials published prior to 1980. CSUSM does have some back runs of print journal indexes. The electronic databases, America History & Life and Historical Abstracts, do index materials published from about 1945.

• To locate print reference sources, use the keyword search in the catalog as in Exercise 1 to look for materials and then limit/modify the results to REFERENCE location. If you don't get anything back, try a broader term (e.g., 'presidents' rather than a specific president by name.) As Furay notes, basic facts can frequently be found in an almanac and more in-depth information will be in the specialized encyclopedias, biographies and longer works.
• To locate electronic sources, you may choose from a number of databases, some are identified in the Databases tab. Use the advanced search with your keywords and any data limiters such as date published. Remember, you are looking for scholarly articles!

CAUTION! Many databases will offer a 'scholarly' search limiter, but that just means the item was published in a scholarly journal, but does NOT mean the item is scholarly. Book reviews, letters to the editor, opinion pieces (essays) and conference announcments will not count as scholarly! Do not assume and learn to look for the scholarly markers noted below.

Prospectus, First and Second Paper

You may have a particular person in mind to be the focus of your research, if so, good for you! If you do not, you may have an overwhelming amount of possibilities, but you also have a variety of resources to make an informed choice. Either way, doing some exploratory research to see what is available is strongly recommended to be sure appropriate and sufficient resources are available.

Prospectus

The first exploration is to inform your prospectus as you can discover how much correspondence and related secondary resources are available. Unfortunately, the range of both types of materials varies widely in availability, so even if you are sure something exists, you need to determine if you can access it either in print, digitally or through loan.

Once you know what is available, you can write your prospectus as described in Dr. Sepinwall's syllabus. You will not necessarily have all your resources in hand, but you should have them ordered if they are not part of the CSUSM collection.

First Paper

A survey of the social, economic, historical (and more) events and climate of the letter writer. This requires surveying both books and databases for scholarly secondary sources. These are not focused on your letter writer, but the times in which they lived and may mention them tangentially.

Second Paper

Here is where you meet interesting challenges in that the required source material is more focused scope and limited in extent than your first paper. See the Catalog & Letters tab for specifics in search for the required letters.

The first step of the exploration is through the library catalog by searching for either a person or a topic. Doing this type of simple search will bring back plenty of material in both the primary and secondary categories that you need for your second paper. Let's say you are interested in the history of the labor and union movement in the United States. A search in the catalog will retrieve a variety of titles, but in looking at them, you note the name, Mother Jones, as a specific person. Finding a specific person is important as you will be looking for a collection of correspondence by a historical figure for your research project.

You will need to locate your historical figure's correspondence which must meet the following criteria:

• This is 10-100 pages of text constituting 1-2 months' worth of correspondence.
• This writer must be deceased.
• Use this material to evaluate and form a thesis about the writer's world in paper #1--watch for the bias of current thinking--this person reflects the thoughts of their time, not yours.
• Use this material to form the basis of your research for paper #2. Find primary and secondary sources to validate or refute your previous evaluations and develop a broader context. For example, compare your subject's status, religious beliefs, and views with others of the time to get a sense of how they saw and reacted to their society and time.