Photo Research Project
History 112
Dr. Nutting
Spring 2006
Distributed: April 3, 2006
Prospectus Due: April 18, 2006
Project Due: May 18, 2006
Photos Displayed: June 7, 2006
This assignment has several objectives:
 To assist students in learning about their own history and US history.
 To familiarize students with different history research methods: use of primary and secondary
source materials, including family photographs, databases, material culture, and oral history
interviews.
 To have students recognize the difference between what are personal stories and what is
history, and to recognize how both inform each other.
 To promote dialogue and understanding among students of diverse cultures, different
generations and different racial, religious, social and ethnic groups.
 To join other student communities in community colleges across the US in the "Faces of
America" project.
Photo Project: there are three parts to this:
Part One: the Photo. Mount a photo of your subject. Supply a very short caption, giving
your subject’s name, the date and place the photo was taken, and the event or situation for
the photo.
Examples: John Short, with his wife Mary, on Mahan Drive, Norfolk, VA, May 15, 1944, the day
before John sailed for England OR Chau and Dep Thieu at the Cathedral in Saigon, on their
wedding day, May 13, 1964,
Part Two: the individual’s story. This should take two or three pages.
Example 1: RE: John. You may write about John, the son of Ira and Rosa Shakowowitz, Polish
immigrants who arrived in the US in 1920. Raised on the south side of Chicago, he finished high
school, married Mary, and worked in a meat market there until he was drafted by the Army in
1943. John invaded Normandy with others in the First Army on D-Day, and fought east to
Germany by V-E Day. He returned, went to college on the GI Bill, which also helped him buy the
family home, and went to work for the Internal Revenue Service in New York City. In 1948, He,
Mary and their four children lived in Levittown, NY until he retired from the government at age 65,
when he started drawing Social Security benefits.
Example 2: Dep, a LT in the ARVN, was captured in Pleiku by the Vietcong in 1972, and held as
a prisoner of war. After the fall of Saigon, his wife Chau’s was arrested, relocated and “reeducated”. Reunited, they escaped by boat to Thailand, and from there went to a camp in Hong
Kong, and then to Kent, WA, where Dep began English classes and got a job in a Seattle hotel.
Part three: connections. This should take two or three pages.
Since John was the first in his family to attend college, you may want to focus on the GI Bill of
Rights, which allowed John to earn his college degree and which also allowed him to buy an new
house for $7990—with nothing down. Your paper will explain these laws, their overall provisions,
the numbers of veterans they affected, and how they affected veterans’ lives after World War II.
Or you might want to focus on the Levittown phenomen in post-World War II America.
With Chau and Dep, you may focus on the fall of Saigon, the boat people, resettlement programs
for Vietnamese refugees in the US, or changes in US immigration laws since the early 1960s.
Bibliography: This is the last page of your paper. It should list every source you used in this
project. Entries should be put in alphabetical order, should not be numbered, and should follow
the Chicago style sheet. To see how this looks on a printed page, go to
http://lib.usm.edu/~instruct/guides/turabian.html
Nutting/112w06photorsrch.doc1
GUIDELINES
 Research, organize and write each section carefully.
 Cite your sources. Put quotations in “quotation marks” if they are four lines or shorter or set
them off with wider margins if the quotes are longer than four lines. If you paraphrase
someone, give a full citation for the paraphrase. For assistance in writing citations using
the Chicago Manual (Turabian), go to
http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocChicago.html or to answer any questions
you have about documenting sources the way historians do, register for free at
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org and use its services.
 To see a thoroughly documented history paper using the Chicago Manual (Turabian),
go to To create footnotes or endnotes in Microsoft Word on your computer, go to the
top toolbar, click on Insert, then click on footnote, then click on footnote and
autonumbering, and click OK. Then give the author’s name, the title of the book, the
publisher, place, date, and the page where you are getting the information. When citing
a journal, give the author’s name, the title of the article “in quotations,” the name of
the Journal in italics, the volume, and (Month, year) of the journal, and the pages from
which you are quoting.
 Use at least FIVE sources for this project. Not more than two can be on-line sources. Not
more than one of the five can be an oral history interview,
 Follow the protocols for the oral history interview—distributed earlier to the class.
 Hand in your own work—not someone else’s work. Plagiarism will not be tolerated.
PROJECTS WILL BE EVALUATED USING THESE CRITERIA:
 Meeting the basic requirements of the assignment (all parts and the sections of these parts).
 The quality and depth of research.
 The contribution your project makes to our understanding of history.
 Correct citation. USE THE CHICAGO STYLE SHEET (TURABIAN) ONLY.
 Organization of the written materials.
 Readability. Is the project well written? Is the material clear, logical, interesting, and
readable and worth the time one spends reading it? Do the parts of the project connect
naturally? (Does John’s story connect to your explanation of the GI Bill of Rights, or do you
have a history piece that deals with the Civil War?)
 Correct grammar, punctuation, syntax, style, spelling, and diction.
 Good editing, proofreading, etc.
SUGGESTIONS:
 Start your project now. This is not one you can knock off in an evening.
 Pan your research and proceed carefully with it.
 Ask for assistance from NSCC librarians. They are very capable, they know what I
expect, and they really enjoy working with you.
 Work with LOFT tutors (top floor of the library). They are very capable, know what I
require, and can help you enormously in organizing, writing and editing your work.
 Write your first drafts several days before the deadline. Then edit, edit, and edit again.
 Get more assistance from the LOFT tutors.
 Discuss your work with others in the class. Share information. Read and critiques each
other’s work. Everyone can benefit from this process.
 Inject some humor into your paper, if you can. We need a little levity in life and work.
 When you think you have a great paper, find out by reading it aloud to someone who
hasn’t read it, doesn’t mind critiquing your work, and doesn’t mind offending you. Ask
your listener to stop you every time they cannot follow your narrative. Work out the
problems the listener identifies. If no one is around, read your paper into a tape
recorder, shut off the lights, play the taps, and listen carefully. Then make necessary
changes.
Nutting/112w06photorsrch.doc2