World History Final Paper:
New York Times Investigative Report
NYT Investigative Report: Stalin (1942-1945)
Overview: As we have learned in this class, historians use primary source documents in order to make arguments about the past in their writing. And often times, historians turn to newspaper articles as sources, and one of the most important newspapers in the world is the New York Times. You will use ProQuest Historical Newspapers database of the New York Times (1851-2010) to write an investigative report, based upon a list of search terms (below). This assignment will give you the opportunity to be the historian, by doing real research and writing an original paper based upon your findings.
Assignment: Navigate to latech.edu/library, click on “Databases: A-Z” and find “New York Times, The (1851-2010).” Click on “Advanced Search” then choose one of the following search terms (and parameters) to enter:
Suffragette, between 1880 and 1910
Influenza, between 1918 and 1919
“Cold War”, between 1947 and 1950 (be sure to use the quotation marks)
Stalin, between 1942 and 1945 (select Front Page Article from the “Document Type” Dropdown on the left)
Olympics and Jews, 1935-1937
Rwanda, 1990-1994
After entering your search terms, organize the results chronologically. Scan through the search results to find 7-10 important articles on your subject. Read these articles very carefully, taking notes on about things you think are important or interesting.
Then, write a short history of the people or events your newspaper articles describe, based only on those sources. Provide some context, identify and explain important issues, and explain why your story matters.
Length and Style: Papers need to be between 4-5 pages, double spaced, 12-point font, and with 1-inch margins. You must list all of your sources in a bibliography (these bibliography pages DO NOT count as a part of the 4-5-page limit). If you quote or paraphrase from an article, you must cite that source using either footnotes or parenthetical citations. If you have questions or concerns, please contact me or Morgan Humble. You may also want to ask the campus writing center for help!
Plagiarism: As a reminder, plagiarism will not be tolerated. Please refer to the syllabus for more information on what constitutes plagiarism. If you have any doubts, please do not hesitate to contact me.
