History 232
Research Essay
The research paper for this class is worth 25% of your final grade. The paper prospectus and annotated bibliography is worth a further 15%, making the entire project worth 40%. The essay will be marked for intellectual, technical and aesthetic merit. It is due on Monday, November 21, 2011and should be 10 double spaced pages, in 12 point Times New Roman font. It must use at least 8 sources, including one primary source and 4 journal articles that were written after 1970 and one monograph.
How to Write a Research Essay
In the last forty years, the discipline of history has changed dramatically. Whereas historians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries tended to comb historical records in an effort to ascertain the absolute truth about an historical event or process, most historians today recognize that there are multiple possible narratives surrounding such events. This means that history has become less about establishing what exactly happened at a certain point in history than about demonstrating one possible way an historical event or process might be understood. Nonetheless within the discipline of history at least, this move towards multiple narratives does not mean that any conclusion at all is possible, for every narrative must be based on evidence provided by primary sources. It is for this reason that I can’t argue that aliens built the pyramids in spite of what I might see on the History Channel. There is simply too much archaeological and textual evidence that suggests the pyramids were built by Egyptian workers for the alien thesis to fly. Thus one’s argument must attempt to reconcile all the evidence provided by the sources and find an appropriate narrative that accounts for them.
So How do I Do That?
1) Preliminary Reading
The first step is to read broadly about a subject that is interesting to you and relevant to the course. If you are very interested in fashion in fourteenth century Italy or Franciscan friars or how peasants lived in England in the thirteenth century begin by reading primary and secondary sources about your topic. You can find such resources by using Novanet and by using a database of articles and books such as Google Scholar, JSTOR, ProQuest or Project Muse. Some good websites to find primary sources on various topics are and Remember that your research essay requires at least 8 sources, 1 primary source, 1 monograph and at least 4 journal articles written after 1970. If you have difficulty finding sources, please feel free to stop by my office for help.
2) Develop an Argument
As you read further into your topic try to think about a possible argument. Is there a point on which historians seem to differ? Is there something that seems to be missing in the literature on which your own primary source research can shed light? Do you see a possible cause for an historical event or process that the other literature does not adequately address? From these kinds of questions, develop an argumentative thesis.
3) Write a Paper Prospectus.
Once you have narrowed your argument sufficiently and have developed a thesis statement, write a paper prospectus. This includes a thesis statement, a short paragraph outlining the main arguments you will pursue and an annotated bibliography for at least 5 of the sources you will use. Your paper prospectus is due on Monday, October 17, 2011. See below for a sample paper prospectus.
4) Directed Research
Once you have an approved paper prospectus, consider how you will go about writing your essay. What points have you said you would consider and how will you present evidence to support your points? How can alternate points of view be incorporated into your argument or explained? With questions like these in mind, return to your primary and secondary sources and take detailed notes. Identify the areas where you need to do further research and using databases along with bibliographies and the footnotes of those sources your have already read, find yet more books and articles that deal with your topic and argument.
5) Write a First Draft
This is a first attempt to piece together a coherent and persuasive argument in formal essay prose based on the research you have been conducting. Your draft should include an introduction and thesis statement, body paragraphs dealing with the evidence for your argument and a conclusion that restates your position. At this point, all of your footnotes should also be in place. Once your first draft is complete, print it out and leave it aside for a few days.
6) Revise and Edit, Final Draft
Returning to revise your essay after a few days will give you a new and objective perspective on it. Read your essay through slowly, making sure the argument flows logically from one point of evidence to another. Are you convinced by your argument? If not, is there anything you can do to make your paper stronger? Is the paper repetitive? If so, see if there is some material that can be excised. Read your paper a second time, this time looking for grammatical, spelling and punctuation mistakes. Make sure the language used in your essay is appropriate for a formal academic paper. Finally, have someone else read your draft, as fresh eyes will help catch errors and problematic arguments which you yourself, familiar with your essay, will miss.
A Note About Footnotes
Formal essays of an academic nature require footnotes. Footnotes are notations given to cite evidence, to give credit for ideas not your own, to provide information about further reading on points made in the essay and to provide the source information about a quotation given in the essay. All essays require a substantial number of footnotes, at least 2-3 per page and very likely more.
Footnotes should be done according to the Chicago Style. A short reference guide to how these footnotes are formatted can be found at:
On this page, the N refers to note and the B refers to bibliography. Do not worry at all about the T and the R.
The above website is just a short guide however, and I urge you all to the required manual for this class, Robert Perrin, The Pocket Guide to the Chicago Manual of Style, (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007), which includes a guide to footnoting in the Chicago style, a sample research essay and detailed advice for writing scholarly papers.
Bibliography
Research essays require bibliographies or lists of books cited in the footnotes. Bibliographies for this class should be done in the Chicago style. This is similar in format to Chicago style footnotes, with some minor changes. See the above website and/or recommended guide for the exact format of bibliographical references (which are different than the format for footnotes.
Sample Paper Prospectus:
Title: [Pro]passio Doloris: Early Dominican Conceptions of Christ’s Physical Pain
Thesis Statement: Thirteenth-century Dominican theologians represented Christ’s pain as more severe than any other person’s pain for complex and not always complementary reasons. The debate can be understood as part of the high medieval revival of interest in humanity and human achievement, but it can also be read as a challenge to heretical beliefs.
Main Arguments: In the thirteenth century, Dominican theologians who were studying and teaching at the University of Paris began to debate how Christ experienced physical pain during his crucifixion. Drawing upon the arguments of the Church Fathers, these considerations culminated in the conclusions of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas that Christ’s physical pain was the most severe that had ever been experienced in the history of humanity. In the past, scholars such as David Nirenberg and Miri Rubin have argued that this new emphasis on Christ’ suffering was linked to a growing movement on the salvific meaning of Christ’s passion. Recently, however John Inglis has suggested that the writings of Thomas Aquinas must be better understood as responding to the Cathar heresy which the Dominican Order was founded, in part, to combat. Based on this suggestion, I argue that the Dominican emphasis on the severity of Christ’s physical pain was meant to counter Cathar beliefs that Christ did not take physical form at all.
Annotated Bibliography (Chicago Style)
Remember you must include at least 5 sources
Secondary Sources:
Nirenberg, David. “The Historical Body of Christ” in The Body of Christ in the Art of Europe and New Spain: 1150-1800, J. Clifton, ed. Munich: Prestel,1997, 17-26.
David Nirenberg’s text here is an introduction to a large collection of images of Christ, in majesty, on the Cross and as a child with the Virgin. The book itself covers quite a bit of time, but Nirenberg’s expertise in the high and late Middle Ages ensures its import to the study of early Christian perceptions of Christ. That being said, Nirenberg’s brief history of images of Christ adds little to nuance the traditional narrative given by most authors of how Christ was largely portrayed in majesty until the mid eleventh century when more images of the crucified Christ begin to appear. To his credit however, Nirenberg suggests that geography, as much as chronology can change how Christ is represented in art.
Rubin, Miri. Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1991.
Miri Rubin’s seminal work links the growing interest in Eucharistic devotion with the complimentary increase in interest in the suffering Christ. She argues that both trends represent an interest in the human nature of Christ rather than the divine. Rubin’s work explores many different kinds of sources including theology, texts of mystical devotion, saints’ lives and art, though her sources are focused on England rather than Europe as a whole.
John Inglis, “A rationale for material elements of Christ’s human cognition: reading Aquinas within his Dominican theological and political context’ in Traditio 58 (2003), 257-284.
Looking primarily at the Summa theologiae and the Commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences by Thomas Aquinas, John Inglis argues that the structure of the third book of the Commentary and the tertia pars of the Summa were designed in such a way as to counter heretical Cathar ideas that Christ was never made flesh. Further suggesting that when Aquinas argues against fourth-century Manichean beliefs of dualism, he is actually arguing against the much more recent and relevant dualism of Catharism, Inglis convincingly argues that almost every point Aquinas makes about how Christ attained knowledge through his human body was made to prove that Christ had a true human body and not simply the image of a body as Cathar theology suggested.
Primary Source(s)
Thomas Aquinas Summa theologiae, Turin: Marietti, 1820.
This text, written by the Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas at the end of his life during the 1260s and 1270s, was written as a textbook for the school of theology he founded at Naples. As it is a textbook, it is a simplified collection of much of his earlier theological thought. Traditionally the Summa is divided into 4 parts, the prima pars which deals with God and Creation, the prima secundae which concentrates on man, human acts and vices, the secunda secundae which deals with the virtues of man and the tertia pars which deals with the incarnation of Christ and the sacraments. The most important part of this text for my own argument is questions 46-49 of the tertia pars about Christ’s passion. Exploring Aquinas’ summa while researching the topic of how Christ was thought to have experienced pain in the Middle Ages is important because Thomas Aquinas’ work would become a well-known and well-used textbook of theology for Dominicans in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.