Prof. Greg Hall             

Department of History

Spring 2008                                           

American West

Think Piece Paper:

The essay must be approximately seven to ten pages in length. Your papers must be typed and double spaced, twelve-point font, and standard one-inch border.  You must also include a work cited page.  I expect two copies of the essay plus the original assessed topic and book list (with my comments on it) to be turned in at the beginning of class on Tuesday, 4/15.   Late papers will be docked five points for every day that they are late.  I will not count weekends or holidays.  I will not accept essays turned in more than five days late.  The think piece will be worth up to 100 points.   

You must avoid plagiarism and cheating.  See your syllabus and plagiarism handouts that are on my webpage.  All of the information, ideas, and words of another author that you use in your essay must be cited.  You must always put into quotation marks the actual words that you use from a source.  An adequate citation must have an author, title, and page number.  For a website, the address is an acceptable citation.  Also, you must give a citation for your lecture notes.  A simple parenthetical citation such as (Hall, lecture, date) will suffice.  To cite a video or film as a source, simply provide a parenthetical citation containing the video's title.  If you do not supply proper citations and/or quotation marks around another author's words, you risk failing the assignment.  Moreover, collaborative writing will result in failure of the assignment.  Do your own work. 

When composing your essays, read the “take-home essay” and the “grading rubric” handouts on my webpage.  Also, you are free to consult a writing resource such as the Writing Center on campus.  You can take a draft of your essay to a counselor at the center.  Feel free to make use of A Pocket Style Manual, The Chicago Manual of Style, Kate Turabian’s A Manual for Writers, or other writing aids.  You can also use an on-line resource such as the Bowdoin web link on my webpage.

The Assignment:

Based on the readings that you have chosen for your theme, write an essay in which you explain to your reader the most important historical elements that you think should be known about your topic.  Feel free to comment on why you chose this topic and what questions you hope to have answered from your sources.  Also you can critically evaluate the sources that you are using in your essay.  This could take the form of critiquing their accuracy, readability, and usability in creating your essay.  This assignment is neither a book review nor a research paper.  It is an opportunity for you to reflect, comment, and analyze a theme that interests you in the history of the American West.