History 1002
Writing Seminar for History Majors

Summer Assignment Sheet
All of the Below Assignments Must Be Completed and Brought to the First Class on Tuesday, August 27, 2002 at 8am

1. Develop a research topic and prepare a one page, type-written, double-spaced essay that describes the topic.  It should be a narrow and well defined topic, not “The Civil War” or “The Roman Empire,” or “China and World History,” or “The Road to Perdition: Human History from Adam to George W. Bush.”  Rather, it should be a topic that deals with a single event or person in history, and from there, you should narrow it to just one or two aspects of that event or person.  Moreover, your essay should place your topic into a broader historical context.  Tell me why I should be interested in this very specific topic by describing to me what relationship it has to the broader story (for instance, what would a paper on Clara Barton’s Civil War nursing experience tell us about the Civil War in general, or Medical History, about her later career in creating and running the American Red Cross?)  This exercise, what we in “the biz” call the “Who Cares? Test” is fundamental to the practice of history.  At the top of the paper please suggest a working title and provide your name and date.  Bring one dozen copies of this essay with you to class on August 27.

2. Prepare a typed bibliography, single-spaced, of at least 10 secondary sources, five books and five journal articles, relating to your topic.  You should be able to do this on-line using Pittcat, Worldcat, OCLC, and America: History and Life.  All of course are accessible through UPJ’s library web-page: www.pitt.edu/~libref/index.html click on Resources for Pittcat, and then on Electronic Resources A-Z for the others, and conduct key-word searches (for instance, the Clara Barton idea above, search for “Barton, Clara” “American Red Cross,” “Civil War Medicine,” “Civil War Nursing,” “Nursing,” and so on.  The key is to conduct multiple searches.  Arrange your bibliography with two groupings, Books—arranged alphabetically by author, and Articles—also arranged alphabetically by author.  Proper citation method is:

Books

Butz, Payne Phil, Yee-Ouch!: A History of Hemorrhoids. City Where Published:
    Publisher, Publication Date.

Articles

Histor, Ian.  “Odd British Naming Practices in the Twentieth Century,” The
    Journal of Useless Information 74 (Winter 1988): 322-376.

3. Answer the following questions in a thoughtful, type-written, double-spaced paper (as many pages as it takes) with your name and date listed at the top.  This will serve as the basis for our discussion on August 27, in addition to your research topic proposal and bibliography:

    A. What is History?  How is history different from the past?
    B. Why and how is history valuable?
    C. Should history be objective?  Can it be?
    D. When and how did you first discover that you liked history?  Tell me
        the whole story.  (Mine involves straddling heavy armament and rubbing the calves of historical
        sculptures!)
    E. What is your favorite history genre and why?

There.  That ought to get you started.  If you have any questions, or would like any help in developing or defining your topic, conducting a bibliographic search, or defiling national monuments, please e-mail or call me.  Home 814-535-3176, Work 814-269-2987 and email pnewman@pitt.edu  Your syllabus will be available by mid-August on my website www.pitt.edu/~pnewman click on Syllabi, then Autumn 2002, then History 1002.

WARNING:
YOU MUST COMPLETE THESE ASSIGNMENTS AND BRING THEM TO THE FIRST CLASS.  THIS IS NOT OPTIONAL.  THE ASSIGNMENTS WILL BE GRADED PASS/FAIL.  IF YOU FAIL TO PRODUCE THESE ASSIGNMENTS YOU WILL FAIL THE COURSE.