By the time we return from spring break, you should be fully committed to your project and have a clear idea of how to do it. For the purposes of this assignment, submit a new, more detailed version of your project proposal (two pages, typed, in complete sentences and double-spaced). It should include the following information:
1) A short working title for the project.
2) A brief description or
summary of the topic.
3) A description of the
central research question you will be examining.
4) A hypothesis that you will be testing; in other words, a rough draft of a possible thesis statement. The hypothesis should be a declarative sentence that answers your central research question. The hypothesis should be capable of being proven or disproven with evidence from your sources. The purpose of developing a hypothesis is to give clearer direction to your research. Your eventual thesis statement will probably be a lot different (you may even find that your original hypothesis was completely wrong!) but this is a start.
5) A bibliography of
the major primary sources on which you hope to rely,
The numbers of necessary primary sources will vary from project to project.
A bibliography that includes a lot of short newspaper articles, for instance,
will need to be longer than one that features longer, fuller sources (such as
book-length studies by social reformers). A good bibliography will include several
different kinds of primary source material. In constructing your bibliography,
think carefully about what sources you will need to answer the research question
that you have posed.
6) A short bibliography of secondary sources that will provide useful background information about your topic (at least two books and scholarly articles that you have obtained and looked at).
In evaluating your second proposal and bibliography, I will consider all questions that I asked when evaluating your first proposal. In addition, I will consider the following:
Note: There is no worksheet or assigned reading for March 15, but you are strongly encouraged to review the relevant chapters (1-4) in Marius as you prepare your proposal. Look also at the section on bibliographies in chapter 6, to learn about the proper format for bibliographies, or click here to see the library's guide to Chicago style (Turabian) citations.
What kinds of primary sources should you look for?
Here is a list of the main types of primary sources that we will be examining this semester, with links to more information. This is not an exhaustive list of primary sources
Studies of Urban Conditions by Contemporary Observers
City Directories and Census Schedules
Census Data Compilations (click here, go to page 2)
How do you find secondary source material?
Students have traditionally relied mainly on books, locating appropriate titles with the help of the Homer online catalog. Although this is a fine method, it is not the only one.
A particularly valuable search method is to use the "America: History and Life" database, which is available through the library's website. This database lists virtually all the history articles published in significant scholarly journals; it also lists book reviews, and thus will direct you to relevant books. Click here: http://norman.lib.uconn.edu/NewSpirit/Databases/DatabaseInfo.cfm?ID=506
Journal articles are often more useful than books, partly because they tend to be more tightly focused on a single topic and partly because they are a lot shorter. Some journal articles are available electronically through JStor or other electronic services available at UConn. In addition, most leading journals are available in paper form at the Babbidge Library. They are shelved alphabetically on the third floor.
Three of the most prestigious journals that publish articles on American urban history are the following:
Increasingly, some students have used web pages as secondary sources. This is usually a mistake. Secondary source material that is available only the Internet is often of very poor quality. Since anyone can put anything on the Internet, history web pages are often incompetently researched and written by hobbyists, cranks, and other amateurs. For the purposes of this assignment, DO NOT USE ANY SECONDARY SOURCES FROM THE INTERNET, unless you first discuss the matter with me in person and explain why this is necessary.