History research paper advice #1: getting started by asking questions and narrowing or expanding a topic:
The chart below is from a book about asking historically-minded questions. The center column is a list of six types of questions.[1]
Recall > descriptive > explanatory > synthesizing > judgmental > open-ended
The left column is called “purpose.” Read this from the bottom up. Notice the matching, ascending order of why the question is being asked.
Now look at the right-hand column. Again, read from the bottom up. Here we have another ascending order that matches with the center column:
PurposesType of QuestionDesired Action
VIcreative thinkingOPEN-ENDEDgives possible predictions
Vevaluation as toJUDGMENTALwhich alternative is/was best
quality of a relationship
IVformation and identificationSYNTHESIZINGstates connection(s) among
of relationships andpreviously disconnected material
conclusions
IIIanalysis of reasons behindEXPLANATORYgives reasons why a given individual
an actionor group acted they way they did; or
why events appear to have occurred
IIorganization of dataDESCRIPTIVEdescribes, compares, contrasts
Iacquisition of informationRECALLgives correct answer
or concepts
2) With respect to this chart, where do you think a research paper starts? And where does an argument or a thesis get created, with respect to this chart?
For example, here is the thesis(main argument) of a paper:
Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address is a powerful example of humane call for healing after the most terrible national event in the history of the United States: the Civil War (1861-1895), but it is not a clear policy statement about how reconstruct the nation politically. This speech, delivered two weeks before his assassination does provide clues to how Lincoln might have guided the era of Reconstruction, and it appears from these and other words that Lincoln would likely have rejected the push towards radical Reconstruction which members of his party came to espouse after his death.
*What does this thesis seem to be saying? What questions were asked that got to this statement?
*Where on the chart above would these questions go?
Recall > descriptive > explanatory > synthesizing > judgmental > open-ended
RDESJO
3) Where would you place the place the following 11 questions? Use the letters to indicate question type.
____What is in Lincoln’s second inaugural speech?
____What was “radical” reconstruction?
____Who advocated “radical” reconstruction?
____What actually did happen to politically reconstruct the nation?
____What is the 13th Amendment? What was the 14th Amendment? What was the 15thAmendment?
____How did these each get passed into being Amendments to the Constitution?
____Why was the 15th even necessary?
____What other speeches or letters did Lincoln deliver or write that had to do with reconstruction?
____Why was radical Reconstruction mostly defeated?
____Would Lincoln have approved of any aspects of radical Reconstruction?
____If Lincoln hadn’t been assassinated how might the Reconstruction era have gone differently?
4) Imagine the student had started with the topic being Reconstruction…..imagine then that the student simply knew the dates of the era of Reconstruction (1865-1876) and also knew that it allowed the southern states to come back into the Union once they had passed the 14th and 15th Amendments into their revised state constitutions, but not much else. Imagine how the student might have narrowed the topic and ultimately connected their interest in not just what happened but also asked why Reconstruction ultimately failed to solve the problem of racism and resentment and social and economic oppression in the south, why some ‘radicals’ within the Republican party were so disappointed in the 1870s. Imagine the student was inspired when they read Lincoln’s final speech(etched in stone inside the Lincoln Memorial). In other words, imagine how this thesis got written.
If you think the thesis about Lincoln and his famous inaugural resides at level IV and level V, at synthesis and the judgment levels in the chart above, you’d be right! Why doesn’t it reside at these higher (but not highest) level? In the list of questions above is at level six (VI) and it produces interesting ideas, but ideas not well grounded in historical fact, where might such conclusions from the student go into the paper?
5) Now imagine the student came to this subject not by starting with Reconstruction as a general topic, but that the student had only read Lincoln’s second inaugural speech. Maybe they’d visited the Memorial in D.C. and remembered it. Then, how would they have had to expand the topic from the words of the speech to get to the larger thesis?
____When did he write the speech? ____Why is it so powerful? ____Why was he killed?
____Is the speech all the more powerful because he was killed and didn’t get to see how reconstruction played out?
Think about the kinds of questions you’d need to ask to get at the thesis from the speech itself as a starting point.
[1]Helping Students Think and Value, Jack Fraenkel, Prentice-Hall, 2nd edition, 1980. p. 154