What kinds of information did the authors find in their primary sources?

What kinds of information did the authors find in their primary sources?

Final Research Paper
Length: 5-7 pages + Bibliography

1. Your paper should have a clear introduction or introductory section that does the following:
   introduces your research topic and its historical context; briefly overviews the related
   historiography and research trends or lack thereof; briefly discusses how your research fits with
   or adds to the historiography; introduces your methodology—that is, the types of sources
   examined by you for this paper and how they fit into your topic; and presents an argument
   about your research topic.
2. The bulk of your paper should be making the case for your argument. You should examine the
   major arguments of each author. How similar or different are the conclusions in the secondary
   sources (i.e. articles) to each other and to relevant secondary sources from class.
3. In addition, you should discuss the types of primary sources examined by the authors to develop
   their arguments. What kinds of information did the authors find in their primary sources? How
   does that information support their findings? If an author includes statistical data (i.e. charts
   and tables), what sources did they examine to produce such data or was that data borrowed
   from another academic source?
4. Assess the validity or strength of the authors’ arguments on the basis of the sources, especially
   primary sources (e.g. declassified government documents, lawsuits, laws/legal codes,
   interviews, images, political speeches, etc.) they examined. If no primary sources were
   examined or cited by the author, then is their work the opinion of a specialist with years of
   research behind them or the opinion of a hobbyiest or a politicized opinion? If only one type of
   primary source was examined by an author, assess how the examination of a more diverse set of
   primary sources may have strengthened, added nuance, or possibly detracted from their
   argument. How do the findings of one author, irrespective of source limitations or because of
   their source selection, support or contradict the findings of another author?
5. Your primary sources must be formally and methodically introduced—don’t refer to them as
   “my first” or “my second” primary source. Introduce and refer to each primary source as what
   they are (e.g. the 2000 national census of Mexico). Summarize the contents of your primary
   sources before examining and discussing their relevance to your research. That is, briefly explain
   the kinds of information typically found in such primary sources and the specific historical
   context in which each of your sources were produced. Then transition to your analysis. Were
   there other types of primary sources that you could have examined to strengthen your research
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   findings? Lastly, determine how your analysis of primary sources supports or challenges or adds
   nuance to the findings in your secondary sources.
6. Critically assess the validity of any popular beliefs, common misinformation, or stereotypes
   relevant to your research topic. In what ways do non-academic popular sources inform or
   misinform their audiences about the historical reality of your research topic?
7. Conclude. Your conclusion should remind the reader of the research question of your essay and
   answer it, summarizing your analysis of the secondary and primary sources examined in your
   paper. You’re welcome to make any final comments on the state of the field with regard to your
   research topic.
   Format
   Double-spaced; TNR size 11 or 12; 1-inch margins
   Page numbers at bottom-center or top-right
   Title: original and reflective of the when, where, and what (i.e. topic and argument) of your research
   Chicago Style footnotes and bibliography
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