Assignments (4b)—Writing From Primary and Secondary Sources

One year ago on Round and Square (30 November 2011)—Lutefisk Dinner
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Assignments"

[a] Shorthand RF

Japanese History and Culture

History 210—Anthropology 275

Final Paper Assignment

Writing From Primary and Secondary Sources 

This assignment is broken into three posts. Click below for the others:

Sources 1               Sources 2               Sources 3

Your paper should have a title at the top of the page, followed by a “shorthand” list of your sources.  From there, space down twice and start your essay...(double-space the essay itself).  Examples:

A Week in a Country Jail:

Peasant Uprisings, Social Disorder, and Punishment in late-Tokugawa Japan

Thomas T. Hall

31 January 1970

1. Peasant Uprisings (Tsuchi Ikki, or Do Ikki), 1428 (Lu, 165)

2. (and so forth)

Salt Miner's Daughter:

Family, Commerce, and Rural Migration in Twentieth Century Japan

Loretta Lynn

19 December 1970

1. Free Market and Abolition of Za, 1577 (Lu, 189)

2. (and so forth)

[b] Saigo RF

Heaven Says Hello:

Cosmology, Religion, and Popular Belief in Medieval Japanese Narratives

Sonny James

17 August 1968

1. Nembutsu and the Founding of a New Sect (Lu, 127)

2. (and so forth)

Come Live With Me:

Barbarians, "Otherness," and Foreign Beliefs During the Sengoku Period

Roy Clark

12 May 1973

1. Limitation on the Propagation of Christianity, 1587 (Lu 196)

2. (and so forth)

Somewhere Between Right and Wrong:

Education, Moral Learning, and Proper Conduct in Meiji Japan

Earl Thomas Conley

18 December 1982

1. Education of Children (Lu, 258-261)

2. (and so forth)

HIST 210—Japanese History and Culture

Paper Assignment

Source Paper Checklist

______ Read the assignment carefully and think about possible paper topics.

  

______ E-mail (or stop by and ask) me any questions you may have.

______ Choose six-to-ten sources from an array of materials.

______ Create a provisional title for your paper and e-mail it to me with the sources 

              in the form listed on page two. 

______ DUE NO LATER THAN Monday, December 3 at 10:00 p.m.

______ Carefully (re-)read your chosen sources in light of what you have read and 

             learned from the course thus far.  

[c] Expert RF

______ Write an essay on Japanese society, culture, or politics by relying primarily on those sources you have chosen.  Your "audience" should be very intelligent people (such as your professors in other classes) who know relatively little about Japan.  You are the expert, but you must convey the cultural and historical details you have learned to someone who knows a good deal about academic argument.

NOTE: For this assignment ONLY, you should not make a separate title page.  Center your title at the top of the first page, followed by your sources.  Begin your essay immediately below.  Double-space the text of the essay.  Finally, put the word count number at the very end of the paper.

Due at my office by 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, December 12

Stylistic Matters 

*Use Chicago-style footnotes or endnotes for this paper (check my style sheet for instructions, and make sure that you know how to use them before you begin writing).

*Although you will list your sources at the beginning of your paper, please include a bibliography that includes the full reference to all of those sources, as well as any others you might use for a quotation or paraphrase in your paper.  

[d] Making history RF

*The sources at the beginning of your paper should be written in an effective “shorthand” that makes it apparent to the reader what you will be analyzing.  The full source reference will appear in the bibliography (see above), as well as in any footnotes you might use.  For example, you should note the chapter or name of the source at the beginning of the paper—just enough to get your point across (e.g. Mary Berry, “Preface”). Please refer to the examples on page two.

*You must use accurate citation, with no mistakes in commonly cited items (e.g. single author books).  Make sure that you master the relevant skills (and practice with your remaining abstracts).  If you need a refresher, check the following website.

http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html

Examples of Footnote and Endnote Formats

Items listed in the bibliography at the end of the paper (note that the last name comes first in bibliographies).

Ebrey, Patricia. Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook. New York: Free Press, 1993.

Mair, Victor. The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

[e] Noted RF

Footnotes or endnotes (first reference to a book; note that the page number follows the last comma—there is no need anymore for use of “p.” for “page”). Note the first name/last name format.

Patricia Ebrey. Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook. (New York: Free Press, 1993), 154.

Victor Mair. The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 617.

Subsequent references to books (there will be many of these for Mair and Ebrey; pay attention to this “shorthand” style). If you have many references to the same book in sequence, you may use"Ibid."—although (seem my style sheet) you are always better off having author and title listed. The problem with "Ibid." is that it does not allow you to add a source at the last minute without messing up your entire citation structure.

Ebrey, Chinese Civilization, 277.

Mair, The Columbia Anthology, 725

Ebrey, Chinese Civilization, 3.

Ebrey, Chinese Civilization, 245 (or: Ibid., 245)

Ebrey, Chinese Civilization, 317 (or: Ibid., 317)

Ebrey, Chinese Civilization, 168 (or: Ibid., 168)

Mair, The Columbia Anthology, 111.

Mair, The Columbia Anthology, 145 (or: Ibid., 145)

Mair, The Columbia Anthology, 315 (or: Ibid., 315)

Mair, The Columbia Anthology, 456 (or: Ibid., 456)

This assignment is broken into three posts. Click below for the others:

Sources 1               Sources 2               Sources 3

[f] Anthology RF