Research Project
Bringing it all together
“It’s much harder to ask a good question than to find the answer”
— Jim Grossman
“When you are writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know.”
— James Baldwin
Remember that you can annotate any Medium page, so you can ask any questions you have about this project directly on this page.
This series of assignments will give you the opportunity to showcase your historical thinking skills through actively doing history. You will not simply locate sources on the historical topic of your choosing and summarize their contents, you will contribute your interpretation of historical events to the existing body of knowledge and share your work via a digital platform that will allow others to access your work and learn from it.
You will complete your project in four steps: First, you will choose a topic and pose a relevant research question about it. Next, you will use all of the resources at your disposal to seek out and evaluate primary and secondary sources that address your question. Once you’ve done some research, you’ll share your findings via the digital platform of your choice and you’ll comment on and critique the work of your peers. Finally, once you’ve received feedback from classmates on your work, you’ll make revisions to your work and share the result.
Step 1: Topic and Research Question
Unit 6 is dedicated to the completion of the first step of your project. During that two-week period, you’ll focus on identifying a manageable research topic based on any historical event or issue that is interesting to you. The sky is the limit since our class doesn’t focus on a particular geographical area or chronological period. Choose something that will engage your creativity and your drive to learn more.
What makes a topic manageable? For the purposes of our class, you’ll want to find a topic that is narrow enough to allow you to find the sources you’ll need to answer your question but that is not so broad that it would be impossible to meaningfully address it in a brief digital presentation. The question you ask of your topic will determine whether or not you’re thinking in terms that are too broad, too narrow, or manageable.
Consider this example: I’m interested in the role that Pancho Villa played in the course of the Mexican Revolution and I’m thinking of a few questions that I might like to try to answer. (1) How did Pancho Villa shape the course of the Mexican Revolution? (2) What type of food was Villa given when he was imprisoned at Lecumberri in Mexico City in 1912? (3) Why did Villa break with the Constitutionalist faction in 1914 and what does that say about his goals for the revolution?
Number 1 is too broad. Entire books have been published, among them a 1,000-page tome, that try to address that question. Number 2 is overly narrow, seemingly absurdly so, perhaps. Villa’s prison food is a detail that, while fascinating to some, will likely be difficult to learn about without visiting Mexican archives. It’s also so narrow that the question has become trivial — it won’t tell us anything meaningful about Villa’s impact on the course of the Revolution (the larger topic). Number 3 is focused, yet broad enough that I’ll likely be able to locate a variety of relevant sources to address it.
Based on this example, you may have noticed that you’ll need to do some preliminary research on your topic in order to pose a manageable and meaningful research question. I needed to know something about Villa’s revolutionary activity in order to understand that his break with the Constitutionalists was a major turning point in the story I’m planning to research.
This doesn’t mean you need to know your topic inside and out to create a strong question, but you will need to do a little bit of legwork before you draft a question.
We’ll do some work in Unit 6 in which we discuss different types of questions for research and analysis, so use those exercises, as well, to help you. This article on Writing Advice at the University of Toronto website may also be helpful (scroll to the section titled “Asking a Good Historical Question; Or, How to Develop a Manageable Topic”).
Post your chosen topic and research question, as well as a brief explanation of why you’re interested in your topic, here on Medium by Sunday, November 14, at 11:59 pm MST.
Step 2: Research and Completing a Bibliography
Once you’ve settled on a topic and research question, you’ll need to continue looking for sources, both primary and secondary, that will help you to address your question.
In your project, you’ll need to reference at least:
- 2 primary sources
- 3 academic secondary sources
- 2 secondary sources
As we’ve been discussing, the more sources the better for evaluating the claims and perspectives presented in each. Source evidence is like pieces to a puzzle that allow us to construct a picture of the past. If you find more than the required number of sources, the better for your project.
Locating primary sources:
Depending on your topic, you may find that there are a plethora of primary sources that have been digitized, published, translated, or otherwise made accessible remotely. Or, you may find that there are only a few or maybe even no primary sources available online. If you find that to be the case for your topic, please reach out to me so that we can discuss possible ways of moving forward.
Here are a few digitized primary source repositories (please annotate this section with others that you come across — this list is not exhaustive):
- New Mexico Digital Collections
- Chronicling America (newspaper archive from Library of Congress)
- Internet Archive (broad range of digitized historical materials)
- Hathi Trust Digital Archive
- National Archives Digital Resources (list of state and local digitized resources)
- National Archives Virtual Library (list of various digitized collections at National Archives and beyond)
- Library of Congress Digital Collections
- Digital Archive of the Guatemalan National Police (at the University of Texas — listed here because we read about it in Unit 3)
Locating academic secondary sources:
What makes a secondary source “academic”? This video below provides a quick overview.
In short, academic secondary sources for history are peer-reviewed and published in either an academic journal (like the American Historical Review or the Journal of American History, among others) or by a university press.
Use the search feature at the CNM Libraries page to search for material relevant to your topic. Once you’ve clicked “search,” use the buttons on the left-hand side of the page to limit the results to “peer-reviewed.” You can also use Google Books to search for books published by university presses. Google provides a generous preview for most books, so you may be able to access what you need there without having to search for a physical book or a full-text digital version.
Locating other secondary sources:
As you searched for academic secondary sources, you probably came across secondary sources that didn’t quite fit the bill — they weren’t peer-reviewed, they were published online outside of an academic website, etc. Those fall into this category.
Academic sources are judged to be credible and reliable because they’ve been written and peer-reviewed by experts in their fields. You’ll need to evaluate other secondary sources for credibility and relevance when deciding whether or not to use them in your project.
Mike Caulfield’s SIFT method for evaluating sources is particularly helpful (h/t Ashleigh McLean in the History department for introducing me to this site). Most importantly, he reminds us that we must read laterally (i.e., a range of sources on the same topic, or, as he puts it, “find better coverage”) if we wish to decipher the credibility and relevance of a source.
This article at the University of California-Berkeley website provides a good overview of how to evaluate sources for credibility. One of the most important things to look for is citations. Has the article, post, video, etc, provided a list of the sources that were consulted to create it? Do those sources come from reputable information outlets?
Also, consider the author and their purpose. Does the author have expertise or authority in the field? What are their stated reasons for publishing this information? And, importantly, do the interpretations, evidence, and ideas presented square with those you’ve read in academic sources? If the source recognizes the ideas presented in academic treatments of the topic in order to present a new interpretation or idea (i.e., the author has placed their work in the existing historiography), then the source may still be credible and appropriate for your work.
The Bibliography:
As you conduct your research, be sure to keep a list of the sources that you locate and present them in a bibliography published here in Medium. You can use whichever citation format you are most familiar with (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.). If you aren’t familiar with any citation format, use this quick guide to Chicago Style — the style guide used by academic historians.
Your completed bibliography is due Sunday, November 21, by 11:59 pm MST.
Important Note:
The research process can be messy and even frustrating — don’t let it get you down and ask for help when you need it. Sometimes you have to be creative with the search terms you use in order to find sources that will help you address your questions. Or, you may find that the sources just don’t fit your question and that it’s necessary to revise your question a bit. That’s more than fine. Just like historical knowledge, research questions aren’t set in stone. You can rework them as necessary as you go. It’s all part of doing history.
Step 3: First Draft and Peer-Workshopping
Now that you’ve located a set of sources that addresses your question and you understand, in broad terms, how historians have interpreted it, you’ll create a narrative that presents your findings. Using the context of what historians have already said about your topic, your argument will be your answer to your research question.
By making an argument, you will contribute to the ever-evolving body of knowledge on your topic. You’ll do the work that historians do.
Since our class is conducted entirely online, using digital tools, I encourage you to present your work via the digital platform that best fits your topic and the types of sources you’re working with. For example, if you completed research based on visual sources, such as photographs from the Great Depression or early Thomas Edison motion pictures, you may want to use a platform like Instagram or Adobe Spark.
Here are some options of platforms you might use to present your work (this list is by no means exhaustive — please add to it by annotating this page):
- Adobe Spark
- Google Earth
- Timelines (like Tiki-Toki)
- StoryMap JS
- Examples From Prof. Robert Jordan’s class (See also his entire site)
- Visual blogging sites like Tumblr
- Twitter feeds that tell a certain story (Every 3 Minutes [blog post], Ditadura 50 Anos)
- Video presentation
- Other ideas — contact me to chat about them
If you’re not able to take on learning a new platform, you can submit your work via Medium as you’ve been doing for other assignments this term. The choice is up to you and if you need help deciding how to present your work, don’t hesitate to contact me to talk things through.
No matter what platform you decide to use, you’ll need to focus on your argument (the direct answer to your research question) by citing and discussing evidence from the sources you’ve located and evaluated that demonstrate how and why you’ve drawn the conclusions that you have. In earlier assignments, we practiced strategies to evaluate authors’ interpretations of and use of evidence to support their arguments. Think about the methods that our authors used and put them into practice in your own work.
Include an introduction that helps your readers understand the significance of your topic, why you’re interested in it, and that makes a direct statement of your thesis.
The subsequent paragraphs should demonstrate the connections between historical evidence (your sources) and your thesis (argument). Be sure to write clear topic sentences that explain the focus and purpose of each paragraph (how it relates to your thesis), cite specific evidence from your sources (include inline citations), and include commentary sentences that provide your interpretation of the evidence. Interpretation connects the evidence to the argument.
Remember that primary sources cannot speak for themselves — they must be contextualized and interpreted in order to demonstrate their relevance to the main argument.
Once you’ve laid out the evidence in support of your argument, close the project with a conclusion that reminds your readers of the central argument and it’s significance. What are the main ideas that they should take away from your presentation?
Once you’ve finished the first draft of your project, paste a link to it in this spreadsheet. We’ll use the spreadsheet to set up the peer-review step of the project.
Your first draft, with link shared in the class spreadsheet, is due on Thursday, December 2, by 11:59 pm MST.
Step 4: Peer-Review and Final Draft
Once many of us have submitted rough drafts to the spreadsheet (meaning that this will likely happen a few days prior to the December 2 due date), I’ll assign peer review groups. Look for your name in the third column of the spreadsheet to see which two projects you’ll need to peer review. You’ll click the link in the fourth column to access the document where you’ll write your feedback to the creator of the project you’ve reviewed.
Peer Review Guidelines:
Be sure to read through the entire project before writing your feedback into the document provided in the spreadsheet. Assess the project on the following points:
- Thesis statement (is it easy to identify? How strong is the thesis?)
- Evidence (can you clearly identify the evidence used? Is it relevant to the thesis?)
- Interpretation (does interpretive commentary contextualize and explain the relevance of the evidence to the thesis?)
- Conclusion (is a conclusion present and does it emphasize the main point and ideas that readers should take away from the project?)
- Other suggestions for improving style and clarity (was the line of reasoning clear and easy to follow?)
As you write your feedback to your classmates, think about the type of suggestions you would like to receive about your own work. Remember that we’ve all put hours of time and effort into these projects. Be sure that your commentary is constructive and that you emphasize the strengths of the project. In identifying areas for improvement, be kind in the language you use and provide specific suggestions of ways that the project might be improved.
All-in-all, strive to leave helpful, critical, and positive feedback for one another.
Your feedback to your peers is due Monday, December 6, by 11:59 pm MST.
Final Draft:
Once you’ve spent some time reading your classmates’ feedback on your own project, integrate their ideas and suggestions into your draft. This doesn’t mean that you have to make every single change or tweak that they’ve suggested. Identify the feedback that is most relevant and valuable, and revise your work based on those ideas.
Once you’ve finalized your project, share it with the rest of us via a Medium post that also includes a brief reflection paragraph about what you learned in our class this semester and what other topics or activities you wish that we might have explored in more depth. I’m excited to hear your feedback about the course.
In other words, embed a link to your project in your reflection post on Medium.
Final drafts and reflections are due on Friday, December 10, by 11:59 pm MST.
