ENC1102-07
Paper 1
Due dates:
Part I September 22 35%
Part II September 29 25%
Part III Draft 1 October 1
Part III Draft 2 October 8 40%
Your first assignment this semester will be a research project about a particular day in
history as an exercise in finding and analyzing source materials. The project will consist
of several stages.
First, you’ll locate sources relevant to your project and submit a bibliography, along with
a rough summary and assessment of each source, for approval. Next, you’ll analyze
these sources more closely: what is it about each source that you find interesting, and
how will you use it in your project? How can you contextualize the source? How does
the author make his arguments, if there is an explicit thesis? If there is not – for example,
if the source is a newspaper article – what does the article tell you beyond the mere facts
reported? How does the information found in that source relate to information in your
other sources? You will have a number of options for the final stage of this assignment:
you will complete one of two creative options, or you may choose instead to write a short
research paper on a topic chosen from one of your initial sources.
To begin, you will pick a specific day. A list of possible dates is found at the end of this
document; you may alternatively choose your birth date, or another date of your
choosing, with my approval. From there, you’ll research what was happening on that day
in history. Look through a variety of sources to locate the major news stories of the day.
You’ll need to locate a minimum of five sources, although more are strongly
recommended. At least three of these must be primary sources, and at least one must be a
secondary source related to a primary source you have chosen. N.B.: none of these five
sources may be Internet sources (with the exception of documents contained in
reference sources accessed through the library’s web site. We’ll go over this in detail in
class.). You should pick your sources with an eye toward their similarities; that is, you
should see some relationship between the sources, and be able to imagine them as
components of a larger, coherent narrative.
After you have located your sources, prepare a bibliography in MLA format. In addition
to your bibliography, you should write a short (1-2 paragraph – and by paragraph I mean
at least 8 sentences) summary and assessment of each source, along with a page or so
describing how you see the sources relating to each other and what the conjunction of
information you have chosen says as a whole. When this part of the assignment is due,
we will individually discuss what you turn in.
Part II of the assignment is an expansion of Part I. Here you should create a detailed
summary and analysis of each source. For primary sources, consider, in addition to the
above questions, what is the most relevant or interesting information, what you can
discern about the context in which you find the source, and what that context might tell
us beyond the facts the source contains. For secondary sources, create a précis of the
source’s argument and discuss how it is relevant to your primary source(s). You should
have one-half to one page for each source. Finally, look ahead to the next part of the
assignment and on a separate page, write a plan and rationale for the third part of your
project.
For the third part of the project, you will create an alternate-reality newspaper; that is, I
expect you to imagine what a newspaper published the day after your date might have
looked like had the stories you’ve researched happened differently. This requires you to
both identify the major impact of the publication of the original story; think about ways
the story could change; and consider how those changes might affect other facets of the
story and the way a professional journalist would report on those changes. For each of
your primary sources, you should write a short (1.5-2 page, double-spaced) article, in a
journalistic style, reporting on the event as it would have occurred given the changes
you’ve come up with. At least one of your articles should show that you have read and
understood the secondary source(s) you have chosen. Remember to include citations of
the source, where appropriate (I’ll discuss examples in class).
Once you have written your newspaper articles, you should create a newspaper in which
to include them. I expect these to look polished and professional. You have access in the
classroom to Adobe InDesign, a professional page-layout program and some class time
will be available. I’ll demonstrate how to use the program, and how to use the included
templates or create your own design. You may also need to work on the assignment out
of class, either with a tutor in the Digital Studio or on your own in one of the campus
computer labs.
As important as the quality of the articles you write for your newspaper is your attention
to the other features of a newspaper. Does your paper have a title? A date and issue
number? A weather forecast? You should design and include a minimum of two
advertisements; these should be something that is substantially your own work (i.e., not
just copied and pasted advertisements from somewhere else), and should avoid
anachronism (that means don’t make an ad for an iPod if your newspaper was published
in 1988). Careful attention to the layout and minor details of a newspaper is important
here. This part of the assignment should be submitted to me electronically, in PDF
format.