Prof. Greg Hall             

Department of History

Fall 2007                                           

History 106 FYE

Think Piece Paper:

The essay must be approximately five pages in length. Your papers must be typed and double spaced, twelve-point font, and standard one-inch border.  I expect the essay to be turned in at the beginning of class on Thursday, 11/15.   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 50.   

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 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:

Read the introduction in part one of U.S. Environmentalism since 1945; then read at least one document from each theme in part two.  Based on that material, write an essay in which you critically assess the need for an American environmental movement.  Make sure that you use as much material as possible and not solely rely on the introduction or on one or two documents.  You will be citing your sources, so I expect you to make thorough use of the material in support of your essay.