Research Paper
5-6 pages (double-spaced), plus notes and bibliography
(Please upload as .doc, .docx, or .pdf.; not .txt, .odt, .rtf, etc.)
Goals:
* exposure to the research, writing, and style of analysis used by historians (a process with some parallels to research in professional literature in other fields)
* learning to explore the larger historical context for a subject in business or the economy
* pursue more deeply a historical subject of your own choosing
Topic:
You may choose any pre-1980 topic relating to American business history. It is a research paper that should be based mostly on the primary (original) sources; a good paper will 1) put that evidence together to form a thesis that 2) is in conversation with at least one scholarly (history) secondary source on a similar topic. Keep your topic small–perhaps an event or particular person or accomplishment–and then talk about that story in a broader context. If your topic covers more than 20 years, the story is probably too big to tell (primarily) from primary sources.
Sources:
Secondary sources: Secondary sources are more recent publications or documentaries, etc, that look back at some historical event; as a rule of thumb, more recent sources are better. Please use scholarly history (journals or monographs), which will have footnotes (or endnotes) and a thesis, among other things. Don’t use information on the open web except as a starting point to get to more reliable sources. “America: History & Life” tends to be the most helpful library database for finding scholarly historical material for the United States. Exceptions: Normally, this database returns scholarly sources, but they also have a few semi-scholarly journals or magazines (such as American Heritage, Civil War, World War II, Air Power History, and Naval History) that will be reliable for facts but will not provide a thesis. You may use them as reference, but you’ll need at least one other (scholarly historical) source. The best way to filter out the semi-scholarly sources is to check the “peer reviewed” box on the “advanced search” page of the database, but that may not catch them all. Be wary of sources in a magazine format rather than a journal format (which is what most of the readings on the syllabus are).
*Another alternative is to go directly to journals in business history and search (Enterprise and Society, Business History Review).
Primary sources: use documents original to the time of your topic. That is, newspapers & magazines, engineering journals, or government reports dating to, say, the 1860s if you’re writing about something from the 1860s.
* If you want to use others, you can, but check with me if they are acceptable if you have any doubts. Your paper is hurt by bad primary or secondary sources.
Primary + Secondary: your ultimate goal is to place your original research in conversation with at least one scholarly, historical, secondary source. What does that mean? As a practical strategy, it means finding a relevant secondary source and identifying its thesis (or central argument). Your thesis boils down to one of three options: whether your research 1) agrees, 2) partially agrees, or 3) disagrees with the other scholar’s thesis. You don’t have to agree–you may be looking at different evidence or a different place or different time that could lead you to a different conclusion. Having a thesis is not the same thing as having an opinion; a thesis is a reasoned interpretation based on evidence.
Your secondary source need not be on your exact topic (and shouldn’t be–why write what’s already been written?). For example, maybe you find a scholarly article in which the historian argues that the British immediately fell for the Ford Model T because of its cupholders. You might use the thesis to explore a) whether cupholders in other models also appealed to the British, b) whether the Canadians also bought Model T’s because of their cupholders, or c) maybe you find evidence that only a few British cared about cupholders, and your reading of primary documents suggests they the British bought Model T’s because they enjoyed the jarring ride. Or maybe you even find that they didn’t like Model T’s at all. You test out the original thesis (of the historian in your scholarly, historical, secondary source) with your original (primary) research.
Other paper resources:
* paper template (Drexel Learn): Some of the information in the Paper Template duplicates information here, but it is written in a format (and formula) that shows citations and other elements of a paper.
* MS Word tips for historians (Drexel Learn): it gives formatting guidance for MS Word. See below about the Chicago Manual of Style.
* writing style tips (Drexel Learn)
Grading Criteria for Paper
Quality of research (these three matter the most):
* the secondary source(s) are scholarly; look for the historian’s thesis
* the primary sources are original documents; depending on the size, it’s best to have several and, ideally, more than one kind (that is, not all newspaper articles)
* proper citation (the paper receives an F if you provide insufficient citation)
Quality of writing:
* organization & clarity of paper as a whole and of each paragraph
* thesis: this is where you put your primary research in conversation with your secondary research.
* active voice (use “The dog ate the bone,” not “The bone was eaten.”). For more examples, google “grammar active voice.”
* use proper citation (Chicago Manual of Style).
Citations:
Chicago Manual of Style:
You need both notes (either endnotes or footnotes) and a bibliography… both of these contain similar citation information. The bibliography goes last; it is arranged in alphabetical order by the author’s last name (or the title if there is no author). The bibliographic citations are not numbered. The notes are numbered sequentially–do not repeat a number; if you use the same source more than once, it gets another number. You may also have more than one source included in a single note. You will be marked down for using a different citation system (please, no parenthetical notes). It’s probably easiest to look at the examples.
Plagiarism:
Plagiarism comes in many forms–some guidelines:
* Your reader should always know where your information comes from. As a rule of thumb, almost every paragraph should have at least one note, which indicates the source and the relevant page number(s) (if the source has pages numbers).
* All direct quotations (words taken verbatim (or word-for-word)) should be enclosed in quotation marks… except for longer quotations that you indent and single-space.
* Paraphrase carefully: it’s not enough to intersperse a few of your words and rearrange the original words–make sure your wording is different.
Please don’t plagiarize. Not only is it wrong, it violates university policies and requires disciplinary reporting, which is a pain in the neck for professors and very bad for your academic record.
